Nearly 260 million children had no access to schooling in 2018, a United Nations agency said in a report Tuesday that blamed poverty and discrimination for educational inequalities that are being exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak.
This represented 17 percent of all school-age children, most of them in south and central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. "Lessons from the past -– such as with Ebola -– have shown that health crises can leave many behind, in particular the poorest girls, many of whom may never return to school," UNESCO's director general Audrey Azoulay wrote in a foreword.The report noted that in low- and middle-income countries, adolescents from the richest 20 percent of households were three times more likely to complete the first portion of secondary school -- up to age 15 -- than those from poor homes.
And in richer nations, 10-year-olds taught in a language other than their mother tongue scored 34 percent lower than native speakers in reading tests. Some 335 million girls attended schools that did not provide them with the water, sanitation and hygiene services they need to stay in class while menstruating.
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