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Millions of children left behind, UNICEF report card on education warns

Politics

GENEVA, 21 September - UNICEF warned today that education systems in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States were leaving millions of children behind each year.

A report ‘Education for Some, more than Others’ commissioned by the UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS concluded that, in spite of the economic recovery and increased public expenditure on education in many countries over the past decade, most national education systems were struggling to provide universal education.

A key indicator of these systemic failures was that there are an estimated 2.4 million ‘missing children’ of primary school age, who should be in school but are not and almost 12 million missing out-of-school secondary school children.

UNICEF’s Director for the CEECIS Region Maria Calivis said that meant more than 14 million children entered adult life every year without any kind of formal education or school diploma and this in a region largely known for its former high levels of access, quality and equality in education.

“This situation will lead to intergenerational cycles of poverty, and undermine the capacity of governments to develop globally competitive economies based on skilled labor rather than cheap labor,” Maria Calivis said.

The report found that public expenditure on education reinforced rather than counteracted social, ethnic and economic inequalities in access to and in the completion of basic education. Family background, mainly parents’ income but also education, had increasingly become a determinant in enrollment and attendance, particularly at pre-school level.

Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan countries with low economic indicators had the lowest attendance rates, less than 50% for upper high school, and in some instances less than 30% for Pre School.

“In Armenia, while enrollment rates in basic education remain high, there are indicators, that the drop out rate is increasing. When it comes to pre-school education, enrollment rates are a fraction of what they were during the Soviet period and are currently just over 21%,” UNICEF Representative in Armenia Sheldon Yett noted.