Concern about the large increase in children who do not read or write in Latin America

The regional head of education at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for Latin America and the Caribbean, Italo Dutra, expressed his concern about the increase in children under 10 years of age who are unable to read and write, and urged to increase investment and implement more efficient programs.

In an interview with EFE within the framework of the meeting of ministers of education Latin America and the Caribbeanwhich concluded this Friday with a call to action, the person in charge assured that there are figures that suggest that the percentage would have jumped from 50% before the pandemic to almost 80% currently.

”There are projections that we made last year with the World Bank on 2022where we could, in the worst cases, reach 80% of these ten-year-old children” who are not able to read and write fluently, and have problems understanding more complex textsstressed the expert.

”A boy or girl who does not learn to read until they are ten years old will have their academic life impacted, and their entry into the world of work will be impacted. “We are in a world where we have more and more labor informality and that, of course, has gigantic impacts throughout life and on the family’s economic income,” she noted.

In this regard, Dutra is committed to cooperation between countries – but also between governments and institutions such as UNICEF– and for the exchange as solutions to a crisis that in their opinion should be a priority.

For this reason, he proposes “focusing on basic learning, so that children can continue learning throughout their lives” and reflecting on what transformations are necessary in 21st century education”, considering factors such as wars, climate emergency and the advancement of technologies like Artificial Intelligence.

”We are very interested in international cooperation, bringing countries together and being ready so that when countries need it we can provide them with technical assistance, bring them the most innovative experiences, the experiences of other countries in Latin America and other regions,” he stated.

The objective is to “support them in their policies to guarantee the right to education for boys and girls” and convince governments that it is essential to “prioritize funds and guarantee more efficiency in spending on education.”

In line with this argument, the expert also proposes recovering some tools that were extremely useful during the pandemicsuch as remote education, and which have been gradually abandoned to create a combined model in which the benefits of in-person and tele-study mutually enhance each other.

”We have important data such as that more than half of the digital educational environments “That were used in the pandemic are no longer being used,” he noted before emphasizing that this must be a listening process in which the voices of the youngest people must also be taken into account.

”They are talking about just that, about an education that is meaningful to them, that serves them for their lives, to access the way of work, to think about things in the world, the problems of the world from their perspective and think about how they can develop themselves, their families, their communities, with the help that the education“, he pointed.

”Always, in the history of education, there has been the challenge of incorporating technologies. In the education It costs them much more time,” he admitted.

“But we must know that the skills and possibilities that writing, reading and writing and basic mathematics provide children with the tools to understand, decipher and interpret codes that are in different things,” such as their own. Artificial intelligencewhich is advancing in giant steps.

Dutra also warned that the greatest negative impact during the pandemic was suffered by the most vulnerable families, not only in terms of learning, but also their food security, their mental healthand other important aspects such as the increase in violence.