Learning crisis

The learning crisis or global learning crisis is a term describing the fact that, despite a large increase in access to schooling, learning outcomes remain poor, especially in developing countries. Worldwide, millions of children who attend school do not acquire basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, and many more are far behind age-appropriate expectations in their national curricula. Proponents argue that this crisis needs to be addressed due to the importance of education in fostering children's development, social mobility, and subsequent opportunities.

Many factors have been identified as causes of the global learning crisis. These include inadequate funding, socioeconomic factors, and quality of teachers. Another contributing factor is that many education systems monitor educational quality using inadequate indicators. In many countries, governments rely on input-based proxies for quality such as budget spent on education and student enrolment numbers, rather than outcome-based measures of student learning.

Experts have argued that overcoming the global learning crisis will require systemic, well-aligned reform of national education systems that goes beyond addressing individual policy areas such as schooling access, student assessment, and teacher quality.