Global Education Monitoring Report

Context

A report by the Global Education Monitoring Report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has highlighted the long-term impact of climate shocks experienced in early childhood.

About

• The report is part of a sequence aimed toward fostering communication on education and the UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• It raises concerns about the lasting harm extreme weather events can inflict on a child’s development.
• The report emphasized the vulnerability of children.
• Their reliance on adults and growing our bodies cause them to be more vulnerable to the on the spot physical hazards of floods, droughts, and heatwaves. 

Major Findings

• Climate related stressors: These are warmness, wildfires, storms, floods, droughts, sicknesses and growing sea tiers, affecting training effects.
  • These studies will have a negative impact on a child’s cognitive abilities, emotional well-being, and educational opportunities.
• Severity: A 10-year-old in 2024 will experience two times as many wildfires and tropical cyclones, three instances more river floods, four instances more crop screw ups, and 5 times more droughts over her lifetime in a three°C worldwide warming pathway than a 10-year-vintage in 1970.
• Impact on Learning: Children in Ecuador who were uncovered to extreme El Nino floods even as in the womb, were shorter and executed worse on cognitive checks 5 to 7 years later. 
• Impact on Enrollment: An evaluation of disasters experienced early in life by over a hundred and 40,000 children in seven Asian countries observed a poor relationship among school enrollment, mainly for boys, and arithmetic overall performance, specifically for girls, by the age of 13 to 14. 
• School Closures: Most low and middle-profits nations are experiencing weather-related school closures every year, growing possibilities of gaining knowledge of loss and dropout.
  • At least 75 percent of intense climate occasions have ended in college closures over the last twenty years.    
  • Tropical Cyclone Gita damaged 72 percent of Tonga’s colleges in 2018. 
• Decrease in Number of Completed Grades: Flood exposure reduced the wide variety of completed grades between 12- to 15-year-olds in Ethiopia (3.4 percent), India (3.8 percent) and Vietnam (1.8 percent), as a result of family profits loss.
• Impact of Heat: An analysis of census and weather information from 29 international locations between 1969 and 2012 determined that exposure to better-than-average temperatures at some point of prenatal and formative years is related to fewer years of education, especially in Southeast Asia. 
  • High temperatures decreased excessive-stakes check overall performance in China, ensuing in decrease excessive faculty graduation and college entrance rates. 
  • Rain variability also can have a terrible effect on educational effects.
• An evaluation of Demographic and Health Survey data from ten African nations well-knowledge that abnormally low precipitation has a negative impact on primary college final touch. 
• Drought reduced children’s mathematics and reading rankings in rural Maharashtra, India by 4.1 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.

Way Ahead

• There is a want to include weather change education in school curricula.
• This integration ought to no longer handiest provide climate technology knowledge, but also competencies in resilience, version and sustainable development. 
• The report advocated for more funding in instructional structures to strengthen their resilience to climate-associated disruptions.
• This includes strengthening faculty homes to withstand weather impacts, educating educators to guide students psychologically and academically for the duration of these challenges, and fostering community resilience through consciousness and model initiatives.

Source: The DTE

UPSC Mains Practice Question

Q. “India faces challenges in providing quality education to its children”. Discuss the importance of new education policy in the light of this statement. (250 words)

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