Education
- 133 million young people cannot read or write.
- The children of uneducated mothers are more than twice as likely to die or be malnourished than children of mothers who have secondary or higher education.
Where does this issue fit into the Millennium Goals?
Millennium Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education - The target is for all children, boys and girls, to complete a full course of primary schooling.
How does this issue affect people?
A good education is one of the most basic rights of the child. Without one, a child is immediately disadvantaged and far less likely to achieve their true potential. Nor is it enough simply to send a child to school - although millions of children are not even given this. What, how and when they are taught is what lies at the heart of true education.
The benefits of education are enormous - a lot more far reaching than just gaining valuable reading and writing skills. Consider some of these facts:
Young people who have completed primary education are less than half as likely to contract HIV as those missing an education. Universal primary education would prevent 700,000 cases of HIV each year, almost 30% of all new infections in this age group.
If you keep a girl in school, you help her change the course of her life, that of her future family, and an entire nation. A girl who goes to school and stays there is much more likely to postpone marriage and childbirth. Those decisions have a dramatic ripple effect. Later childbirth results in lowering the overall fertility rate, which means higher per capita income and the increased ability of a woman to earn a living for herself and her family. And educated women provide better health care for themselves and their children, meaning lower maternal and infant mortality rates. In fact, a country's investment in education leads to a whole host of results that promote economic and social development.
If you want an example, take a look at parts of Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia not too long ago (back around 1950) looked a good deal like sub- Saharan Africa does today, statistically speaking. They were in the same state in terms of economics, literacy, health care and fertility rates. How did these so-called Asian tigers do it? Through education – particularly the education of girls. It’s a simple and well-documented fact.
Information on this page was researched and collated with the help of Oxfam Australia and the United Nations Website.