Giving Compass' Take:

• Alice Albright, writing for Brookings, highlights how private-public partnerships, newer financing models, and a series of reforms can help address the global learning crisis. 

• What are the opportunities for donors to get involved in tackling the global education crisis? 

• Read more about why it's crucial to find solutions to this issue.

Addressing today’s massive global education crisis requires some disruption and the development of a new 21st-century aid delivery model built on a strong operational public-private partnership and results-based financing model that rewards political leadership and progress on overcoming priority obstacles to equitable access and learning in least developed countries (LDCs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs).

Success will also require a more efficient and unified global education architecture. More money alone will not fix the problem. Addressing this global challenge requires new champions at the highest level and new approaches.

In an era when youth are the fastest-growing segment of the population in many parts of the world, new data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) reveals that an estimated 263 million children and young people are out of school, overwhelmingly in LDCs and LMICs.

On current trends, the International Commission on Financing Education Opportunity reported in 2016 that, a far larger number—825 million young people—will not have the basic literacy, numeracy, and digital skills to compete for the jobs of 2030.[2] Absent a significant political and financial investment in their education, beginning with basic education, there is a serious risk that this youth “bulge” will drive instability and constrain economic growth.

Highlighted below are actions and reforms that could lead the way toward solving the crisis:

  • Leadership to jump-start transformation. 
  • A whole-of-government leadership response. 
  • Teacher training and deployment at scale. 
  • Foster positive disruption by engaging community level non-state actors. 
  • Confirm the appropriate roles for technology.
  • Commodity component.

Read the full article about tackling the global learning crisis by Alice Albright at Brookings.