A new educational normality that we cannot consent to

With the new year, The commemoration of International Education Day gives organizations dedicated to education the opportunity to reflect on their situation in the world. An educational context that, far from returning to a new normality, continues to recover from the ravages caused by the pandemic and by the closure of schools in 2020 and 2021.

From Entreculturas we have already warned about the harsh educational reality that the world was suffering. We did it in the report “We cannot turn the page”, in the middle of the pandemic. In its pages we made a detailed study of the serious effects that the measures adopted by governments to deal with Covid-19 would have in the short, medium and long term. Today, January 24, 2023, we continue to experience the dangerous consequences of those extraordinary decisions without knowing if public opinion is aware of the global educational crisis we are experiencing.

Information mutism

This informative silence clashes with the work carried out by international institutions that, through data, investigations and testimonies, have been raising their voices since the beginning of the pandemic about the sudden educational crisis that loomed and that finally arrived. Thus, organizations such as UNICEF have verified that 147 million boys and girls lost more than half of their face-to-face schooling between 2020 and 2021, something never seen before.

However, we must take into account the uneven effect that the closure of schools had on education. While in developed countries the transition to online learning was rapid and carried out by the majority of students, In less developed countries, it was a real digital barrier that expelled one in three boys and girls from school because they did not have Internet access.. This aggravated the existing educational inequalities already experienced by students with low incomes or those who belonged to vulnerable groups, a gap from which we have not yet recovered.

knowledge deficit

Almost three years after the outbreak of the pandemic, it is more than sensible to say that both the closure of schools and the sudden shift to online education have had a direct impact on academic performance. A learning loss that, if efforts to remedy it are not duplicated, could have a very negative impact on the youngest students chronicling a knowledge deficit throughout his life.

This loss of learning adds to the debate on the educational quality that is provided today, especially in impoverished countries and regions that demand better conditions and resources in order to guarantee the right to education. According to UNESCO data, 60% of boys and girls in the world do not achieve basic skills in reading and mathematics, 33% being from Sub-Saharan Africa.. This region has an evident lack of teachers, since it has an average of 69 students for each teacher, unlike the 15 that occur in Europe or North America.

A delay of two decades

We can therefore state that We are facing a restriction of the right to education in the world and a widening of educational inequalities. In this sense, UNESCO has estimated that, in general terms, there has been a delay of two decades in the educational advances that had been achieved before the pandemic.

Especially worrisome are the figures regarding access to education with 244 million girls and boys out of school in the world and with 48% of refugee girls, boys and adolescents not attending school (UNESCO, 2021). Some data that may increase if the intentionality community and governments they fail to get the 24 million students who are estimated to have not returned to school after the pandemic to return.

And, after the pandemic, now what?

As we have seen, the current educational context requires strengthening efforts to guarantee the right to education in the world and thus be able to meet the goals contained in the current Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 4, Agenda 2030. However, it does not seem that this is happening, because a lack of prioritization of education as a public policy begins to be evidencedboth in countries and in the international community.

In fact, once the budgets were reformulated after the pandemic, The international community has curbed its investment in education, reducing investments and displacing national funds to other areas and the budget items dedicated to education of the countries that are part of the Development Assistance Committee (CAD). According to World Bank data, 40% of low- and middle-income countries reduced their spending on education by an average of 13.5% after the start of the pandemic. In fact, one in three countries in the world does not meet the objectives of the 2030 Agenda of investing at least 4% of GDP and 15% of public spending in education.

Decrease in bilateral aid

For its part, the donor community is not reversing this situation either, since direct aid to education stagnated in 2020, falling by $359 million for bilateral donors. Since then, the decline in bilateral education aid has gone hand in hand with cuts in aid to education by major donors. A movement that seeks its justification in the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the changes in the priorities of some governments.

These financial decisions are having two clear consequences that fully impact the enjoyment and quality of the right to education. On the one hand, it has caused the financing gap to increase as states and the international community need to invest many more resources to achieve the educational goals set. And, on the other, the burden that families have to bear to finance the education of their sons and daughters has increasedwith the consequent inequality gaps that this generates between countries and between different social classes.

sad paradox

This causes a situation as paradoxical as that, in low-income countries, 39% of the cost of education is being borne by family householdswhile in high-income countries, this cost is reduced to 15%.

What proposals do we make for the coming years? Spain, as a member of the DAC and as a country committed to complying with the SDGs, cannot be oblivious to this situation and must propose measures that once again place education as a clear priority to achieve a more equal, sustainable and fair world. The challenges are enormous, but our country has to contribute its grain of sand to achieve them. Here are some proposals that would advance in this regard:

• Make bold and determined commitments that allow it to align with the most committed donors of the OECD and the EU in the field of education.
• Force the restrictions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that put control of the deficit ahead of public investment.
• Relieve the debt of the least developed countriesincluding measures that encourage investment in basic public services, especially health and education.
• Increase financing in Spanish cooperation in education and continue working to allocate 0.7% of Gross National Income to Official Development Assistance (ODA), of which 20% must be allocated to education; and 10% of ODA for Humanitarian Aid, of which 10% must be dedicated to education in emergencies.
• Increase resources for the global response to the education crisisimproving attention and recognition to teachers and educational staff.
• Focus our efforts on helping basic educationassuming our commitment to the multilateral initiatives that exist in this area such as the World Alliance for Education (AME).
• Maintain and strengthen the commitment to cooperation decentralized by education.
• Take advantage of the VI Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation as an opportunity to value education.
• Allocate at least 3% of total ODA to Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, to advance in the achievement of target 4.7.

Photograph of Andrew Ash in South Sudan.