Every year, possible Einsteins and Hawkings are getting lost in society due to education being inaccessible; in other words, educational inequalities. According to research done by UNESCO, of the world’s 787 million children of primary school age, 8% do not attend school. Prestigious institutions such as the UN and UNICEF are trying to decrease the negative impacts of educational inequalities around the globe. The answer is that they are trying to find the main events causing these inequalities and how we can fix them. It appears that there are three leading causes of educational inequalities: unqualified teachers, packed and non-diverse curriculums, and an education policy focusing too much on equality instead of equity.
Teachers are the key element for the process of “learning.” Nevertheless, teacher training is not enough, and they are not supported in their service years even if they are lifelong learners and can develop themselves. Quality of education is dependent on the teacher’s qualifications and institutional facilities. Developed countries are more likely to provide sufficient education, whereas poor or undeveloped countries lack resources. In contrast, there is a 5% unqualified teacher population in rich provinces, the rate increases to 9% in poor provinces. Also, teachers with more than ten years of experience are the 12% of the teachers in rich countries while this rate is also decreasing to 7% in poor countries. This 2 imbalance in education institutions affects the process of learning around the globe negatively. Since the quality of teachers will directly affect the quality of education, this situation increases the socioeconomic differences between different countries. For instance, it is known that today, “It would take 15-year-old Brazilian students 75 years, at their current rate of improvement, to reach wealthier countries’ average scores in math and more than 260 years in reading.”(UN, 2020)
Countries do not consider circumstances like the capacity students can take for their curriculum and the diversified community they have. Government must consider that sometimes, less is actually more. Setting unrealistic expectations toward students with packed content leads students to “more learning” instead of “deeply learning.” Finland is an example of this because its curriculum uses “big ideas” and key concepts, while Argentina does not. (OECD, 2017) According to data, Finland’s quality of life index is 184.96, while this index is 105.42 in Argentina. (Numbeo, 2022) Therefore, it must be stated that the quality of education is not the only factor but definitely an important one for a higher life quality. Also, even though many countries are diverse, they do not regionalize the mother tongue of their education systems and do not implement regional customization on their curriculum. For instance, Africa has many curriculums that use different languages in education. While this situation negatively affects the level of knowledge and education received within the country, it causes Africa to display unbalanced graphs when we look at it as a whole due to the synchronization problem about education in Africa as a continent. These unsynchronized curriculums cause societies to become very diverse and sustain the social classes in society. Because there is no specific implication for these problems in curriculums, the educational inequalities repeat themselves in a cycle and create an even more unsustainable world.
Undoubtedly, equity and equality are not the same; even governments believe so. For example, in Turkey, even the private institutions referring to well-qualified education for society separate their school tools equally, without caring about their students’ economic status. Due to wrong policy-making, resources are not allocated fairly, and not everyone gets what they need. Furthermore, this eventually causes educational inequalities to sustain. Turkey has not experienced any growth for years, and economists believe that it is because there is no high-quality education in Turkey. Because not everyone has the standards they need, even if the conditions are the same, the efficiency will not be the same for each student, and that turns out to be an education system full of inequalities.
In conclusion, there are three main reasons for educational inequalities: unqualified teachers, packed and non-diverse curriculums, and wrong policies about equity in education. To prevent educational inequalities from happening and break the cycle, there must be better policy-making and action to raise awareness and unity around the globe. Because the time is running out.
Sources
Numbeo. «Quality of Life Index by Country 2022 Mid-Year.» 2022. Numbeo. 18 12 2022.
OECD. Curriculum Overload : A Way Forward. OECD, 2020. 18 12 2022.
Roser, Max. «Access to basic education: Almost 60 million children of primary school 4 age are not in school.» 2 11 2021.
Our World In Data. 18 12 2022. . Schmelkes, Sylvia. «Recognizing and Overcoming Inequity in Education.» 22 01 2020. 18 12 2022.
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