Why are South Asian Schools Seriously Under-performing?

A guest lecture by John Richards, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University

Abstract:  Schools - especially government schools - are under-performing in much of South Asia. According to the World Bank's "learning poverty" statistic, among children in South Asia, ages 10 - 14, over half (58%) cannot read simple stories at Grade 2 level in the relevant regional language. There are many reasons: low government education budgets, learning loss due to COVID, excessive politicization of hiring and posting of teachers.
This problem can be solved only by South Asian governments. But Canada could help by channeling most of its primary education aid to projects that evaluate learning outcomes. The three presenters recently evaluated a large pilot project conducted by BRAC, a NGO in Bangladesh. It reintegrated 70,000 children who had either never enrolled in a government school or had dropped out at an early grade