21st April, 2017
The increase in reading and writing proficiency among women is a result of the significant improvement in their enrollment and completion of primary education over the last five decades, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said.
UNESCO stated this in the publication: ‘Reading the Past, Writing the Future: Fifty Years of Promoting Literacy’.
The publication marked the “uplifting and sobering” 50th anniversary of UNESCO’s efforts to mark global progress on literacy, celebrated annually on Sept. 8 as International Literacy Day.
The UN agency, however, pointed out that overall funding for adult literacy has remained low, according to the study.
The authors of the current report examined the nature and evolution of the educational challenge, and took stock of literacy initiatives worldwide, UNESCO said.
“The spread of literacy among women has been a key feature of the past fifty years.
“However, the gap between male and female literacy rates only started narrowing from 1990 onwards.
“UNESCO projects that it is likely to keep unfolding over the period of 2015-30 and beyond,” the publication found.
Qian Tang, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, in the publication’s foreword, noted that various positive trends were highlighted in the report.
Tang called for “renewed and strengthened commitment to support literacy promotion for all, including the 758 million youth and adults currently excluded from the networks of written communication”.
The authors of the report noted that around 1950, just over half of all the world’s people were reported as being literate.
Since then the adult literacy rate has increased by five percentage points every decade on average, to 86 percent in 2015.
One of the report’s main findings was that there are now more illiterate adults compared with 50 years ago, meaning that literacy efforts have not kept pace with population growth, a trend Tang finds “troubling”.
The UN’s educational agency identified sufficient resources for education as one of the bottlenecks for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 4.
The goal targets ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, including for the large and growing group of illiterate adults.
The authors found that funding for adult education and literacy has rarely been adequate.
UNESCO claimed that lack of funding is one of the reasons why progress continues to be slow in certain regions and countries.
Among the surveyed countries, only four devoted three percent or more of their educational budget to adult education, it said.
Total aid to education by the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is about 1.4 percent of their total aid budget, according to the UNESCO report.
The report added that only a few OECD-members devote more than three percent of their individual funding to education.