12 Issues Facing Education

1. A lack of funding for education

Girls walk to an UNRWA school for the first day school year in Gaza City, Aug. 29, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are starting their school year in the Gaza Strip amid a major budget crunch for the UN agency that funds many schools.
Image: Felipe Dana/AP
Developing countries can’t rely solely on their own financing for education — there’s also a need for more foreign aid.
Only 20% of aid for education goes to low-income countries, according to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). But it costs an average of $1.25 a day per child in developing countries to provide 13 years of education.
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If each developing country invested just 15 cents more per child, it could make all the difference. There is currently a $39 billion gap to providing quality education to all children by 2030. GPE encourages developing countries to contribute 20% of their national budget to education, and allocate 45% of it to primary education. 

2. Having no teacher, or having an untrained teacher

Teacher effectiveness has been found to be the most important predictor of student learning. GPE is determined to fight the global teacher crisis at hand. 
There aren't enough teachers to achieve universal primary or secondary education. And many of the teachers that are currently working are untrained. As a result, children aren’t receiving a proper education. There are 130 million children in school who are not learning basic skills like reading, writing and math.
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Globally, the UN estimates that 69 million new teachers are required to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030. To offer every child primary education, 25.8 million school teachers need to be recruited. Meanwhile, in 1 out of every 3 countries, less than three-quarters of teachers are trained to national standards.