The Value of Education

Education is more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is among the most significant investments a nation can make in the people and its future and is also important to reducing poverty and inequality:

Education gives people critical skills and tools to enable them to better provide for themselves along with their children.

Education helps people work better and will create opportunities for sustainable and viable economic growth now and into the future.

Education helps fight multiplication of HIV/AIDS along with other diseases, reduces mother and child mortality so helping improve health.

Education encourages transparency, good governance, stability and helps fight graft and corruption.

The outcome of acquisition of education is profound: education ends in raising income, improving health, promoting gender equality, mitigating global warming, and reducing poverty.

Education is the vital thing to unlocking a country's potential for economic growth:

If a lot of students in low income countries left school with basic reading skills 171 million people could be lifted from poverty. This is the same as a 12% decline in global poverty. (EFA GMR, UNESCO, p. 8)

One extra year of schooling increases an individual's earnings by as much as 10%. (EFA GMR, UNESCO, p.7)

Wages, agricultural income and productivity %u2013 all crucial for reducing poverty %u2013 are higher where women involved in agriculture be given a better education. (EFA GMR, UNESCO p. 4)

Each additional year of schooling raises average annual gdp (GDP) growth by .37%. (EFA GMR, UNESCO, p.6)

A growth of a single standard deviation in student scores on international assessments of literacy and mathematics is a member of a couple ofPercent rise in annual GDP per capita growth. (World Bank, p.32)