By Khalifa Hemed
Published November 1, 2024
A newly published report on education across the world shows that this sector is in a crisis.
Titled Lead for Learning and published by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations, this UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report explores the role of leadership in driving educational change.
The report shows that 251 million children and youth are out of school worldwide; 122 million are girls and 129 million boys, with the starkest inequalities evident in poorer countries. More than half of this out-of-school population is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.
For every US$100 spent per child in high-income countries, the report reveals that less than US$1 reaches children in low-income countries, according to Education Finance Watch (EFW), a collaborative effort between World Bank, GEM Report and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).
In Africa, countries spent almost as much on debt servicing in 2022 as they did on education, according to EFW.
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The report stresses the role of leadership in addressing the education crisis. Strong, empowered leaders are essential to transforming education outcomes, yet only half of school principals globally receive training in core areas like teaching, collaboration, and personnel development. Leadership accounts for over a quarter of the variation in school performance, emphasizing the urgent need to invest in leaders at all levels, from ministries to schools.
Politics, the report says, is sometimes standing in the way, with more than half of ministers for education out of office within two years of being appointed, and 29% of countries still making teacher hiring and firing decisions based on political views. Close political ties can be detrimental for education outcomes, with short-term considerations taking precedence over transformational goals in education.
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Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report, says: “Good schools require good school leaders who can inject new momentum into learning. These leaders, second only to teachers in influencing student outcomes, must be supported with training and resources. We’re not empowering our leaders to help take education where it needs to be. Four in ten countries do not even give university leaders the ability to take academic and organisational decisions by law”.
The GEM Report shows that:
- Numbers of out-of-school children in Africa have increased by 12 million
- 650 million children leave school without a secondary school certificate
- The gap between the poorest and richest students’ education completion rates has widened, significantly affecting the most disadvantaged
- The share of official development assistance to education dropped from 9.3% to 7.6% in 2019-2022
- Aannual investment gap in developing countries is nearly US$100 billion
- Children are less likely to read with understanding today than a decade ago, a step back in progress
- The quality standards for teachers are dropping in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and North America
- Finance is insufficient to help speed up progress, and the cost of debt servicing is adding pressure
- Leadership accounts for up to 27% of the variance in student outcomes
- Under two-thirds of countries have competitive recruitment for principals. Gaps in management and diversity also persist
- Barely half of principal training programmes focus on key leadership dimensions. Half of principals in high income countries have no preparation training before taking post
- Almost 40% of all countries do not recognize higher education institutions’ autonomy by law
- Principals in low- and middle-income countries spend 68% of their time on administrative tasks; one third of public school principals in the richest countries report lacking sufficient time to focus on teaching and learning.
