UNESCO’s Director General: Education is often undervalued & underfunded

CAIRO – 25 September 2022: In a message to world leaders at the Education Transformation Summit, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] Audrey Azoulay said that education is often undervalued and underfunded.

In her message, Azoulay stressed that the only possible solution to bring about a profound change in the world for the better lies in investing in education.

The organization had revealed in a report entitled "Alarm Bells" that 244 million children and youth around the world are still out of school. There is a crisis in foundational learning, literacy and numeracy skills among young learners.

It is estimated that 60 percent of children around the world are unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of ten. 

A new survey by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development finds that a quarter of countries have not yet collected information on children who have returned to school and who have not returned to school since the onset of the epidemic.

That is why the Transforming Education Summit was held in New York to rally world leaders and put education at the top of the political agenda. It aims to mobilize ambition, action and solutions to restore learning losses associated with the pandemic; to reimagine education systems for today's and tomorrow's world; Aland revitalize national and global efforts to achieve inclusive and equitable quality education.

UNESCO mobilizes and consults all stakeholders and partners to catalyze transformation in every aspect of learning. At the summit, UNESCO is highlighting a number of key initiatives such as expanding public digital learning, making education responsive to the climate and environmental emergency, and improving access for children and youth affected by crises.

Recent UNESCO findings reveal that about half of the 100 countries reviewed did not mention climate change in their national curricula. This illustrates the disconnect between what is taught to learners and the reality we all experience in every part of the world.