In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared in Article 26 that everyone has the right to education, that elementary education shall be free and compulsory, and that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to strengthening respect for human rights. Since then the world has come remarkably close to getting every child into a classroom. Getting every child to learn has proved harder.
Access: a great expansion
Around 1950 close to half the world's adults had never been to school. Today primary enrollment is near universal in most regions, and the average years of schooling have risen in almost every country. Some of the fastest gains came when countries abolished school fees; when Kenya made primary school free in 2003, enrollment jumped by more than a million children in a year. Still, UNESCO estimates that more than 250 million children and young people are out of school, a large share of them in sub-Saharan Africa and many in places hit by war or crisis.
Schooling is not learning
Enrollment counts bodies in seats, not what happens in minds. Household surveys run in India by the organization Pratham since 2005 found that large numbers of fifth graders could not read a story meant for second graders. The World Bank measures learning poverty: the share of ten-year-olds who cannot read and understand a simple text. Its 2022 estimate for low- and middle-income countries was about 70 percent, up sharply after pandemic school closures. The economist Lant Pritchett has summed up the problem by arguing, in effect, that time spent in school and actual learning are different things. A major reason is that curricula often race ahead of what children can do, so students who fall behind early never catch up.
Girls' education
For much of history girls received less schooling than boys, and in some places they still do. Educating girls is first a matter of equal dignity: a girl has the same right to learn as her brother. It also has broad effects. Women with more schooling tend to marry later, have fewer children, and have children who are more likely to survive, a pattern found across many countries, though researchers debate how much of it is cause and how much reflects other differences. Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 for speaking out for girls' schooling; in 2014 she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Afghanistan, the Taliban barred girls from secondary school after taking power in 2021 and later from universities, making it the only country to ban girls' education beyond the primary level. In some regions the old gap has reversed, and boys now lag girls in finishing school and entering university, a problem that also deserves attention.
Cheap things that work
Development economists have tested many ways to raise attendance and learning with randomized trials. Some of the cheapest worked surprisingly well. In Kenya, treating children for intestinal worms reduced school absence at a cost of well under a dollar a child each year. Giving families accurate information about the earnings gains from schooling raised attendance in Madagascar. Expensive inputs such as new textbooks often did less than hoped when many children could not yet read them.
Comparing countries
Since 2000 the OECD has run the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which tests fifteen-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science every few years. Finland topped early rankings with highly trained teachers, little standardized testing and short school days, and became a pilgrimage site for reformers. Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Shanghai have scored near the top with quite different approaches, including demanding curricula and, in some cases, heavy private tutoring. But Finland's scores have declined since the late 2000s, a reminder that league tables deserve caution: a country's results depend on its whole society, not just a recipe that others can copy. PISA has critics too: it measures only a few subjects, and governments may bend their teaching toward it, the same worry raised about high-stakes tests within a single country.
Worked example: teaching at the right level
Pratham noticed that in many Indian classrooms the teacher followed the grade-level textbook while half the class could not yet read. Its response, called Teaching at the Right Level, groups children for part of the day by what they can actually do rather than by grade. A child who reads only letters works on syllables; a child who reads words works on short paragraphs. Simple activities and frequent quick checks show when a child is ready to move up. Randomized evaluations led by researchers including Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo found clear gains in basic reading and arithmetic, and the approach has spread to several African countries. Its lesson connects with the earlier levels of this course: formative assessment and starting where learners are matter as much in a crowded rural classroom as anywhere else.