Despite a remarkable success in achieving the goal of universal primary education in the South Asian countries, young people are trapped in poverty due to the poor quality of education, the World Bank (WB) mentioned in a report Monday.
"Poor quality of education in South Asia, as reflected in low learning levels, traps many of its young people in poverty and prevents faster economic growth and more broadly shared prosperity," according to the report.
In the first comprehensive study to analyze the performance of South Asian educational systems in terms of student learning, the WB said the governments in the region recognized that they must do more now to improve the quality of education in schools, after having achieved a tremendous progress in increasing schooling access over the past decade.
The report recommended a multi-pronged strategy with initiatives outside the education sector to address South Asia's education challenges, including - ensuring young children's enough nutrition, raising teachers' quality, use of financial incentives to boost quality, bringing in private sector, improvement in measurement of student progress etc.
It noted that many governments in South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) invested heavily in education to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education for all children by 2015.
The investment resulted in an increase in the net enrollment rate in South Asia's primary schools from 75 per cent to 89 per cent from 2000 to 2010, bringing the region closer to the enrollment rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (94 per cent) and East Asia and the Pacific (95 per cent).
Yet there are large differences in schooling access across the countries of South Asia as well as between different socio-economic and demographic groups within countries, it added.
According to the WB report, Sri Lanka is a clear outlier, having achieved near-universal primary education decades ago. Afghanistan and Pakistan still lag significantly behind other South Asian countries.
The report was most concerned with the disappointing outcomes, as measured by student learning, of South Asia's education systems, which it said in part reflected coping with the large influx of children, who were first-generation school-goers.
Much of what South Asian students are taught is "procedural" or note-based. Students are poorly prepared in practical competencies, such as - measurement, problem-solving and writing meaningful and grammatically-correct sentences. One quarter to one third of those, who graduate from primary schools, lack basic numeracy and literacy skills that would enable them to further their education.
