How would you feel if your school suddenly ceased to exist? Or what if you had no teachers for your classes? For a while, you might enjoy the break. After a short time, however, you would probably recognize that schools and teachers are beneficial – without them, we can’t get a decent education and advance in life. Sadly, kids in many poor nations must face these kind of situations daily.

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Before children can be taught effectively, schools or other educational institutions must be created and stocked with adequate teaching materials. Rural schools in many poorer countries are severely limited in their supplies. They may lack textbooks, paper, desks, blackboards, chairs – even pencils. Collections of books, science equipment, and computers are even more rare in these classrooms. Some schools do not even offer basic hygienic necessities such as bathrooms.

Part of a schoolhouse run by the non-governmental organization BRF.

The cause of this ‘schoolroom poverty’ is lack of funding. The governments in developing countries can be very cash-strapped, and cannot afford to divert money to education. Sometimes, tax systems are badly managed, so funds that would go to education are siphoned off by competing interests. The bottom line is that in many Third World countries, education is simply not a priority issue for the government: developing countries spend an average of $40 per student each year in their education systems, compared to about $4,000 per student in developed nations.

However, with additional funds in the form of grants and loans from developed countries and other organizations, developing countries should be able to fund their educational programs. The World Bank is a leader in this field. They identified the need to supply textbooks as one of their major educational priorities in their report ‘Opening Doors: Education at the World Bank.’ The World Bank has conducted similar activities for years – in 1994, it approved a ‘Primary Education Project’ in Venezuela that cost around $89.4 million. The program eventually helped improve dozens of schools, serving over a million children.

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Teachers are also essential to the learning process. Without them, children cannot learn, and schools serve no purpose. Unfortunately, attracting high-quality teachers to schools in developing nations is an increasingly difficult challenge. For one thing, the number of qualified educators is small in many of these countries – especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, and the jobs they are offered do not always pay well. This forces schools to hire teachers who are unqualified and ineffective; sometimes, these teachers never even show up in school.

Building schools in developing countries is one of the first steps toward education for all.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the biggest causes of this lack of teachers, especially in Africa. Thirty percent of all teachers in countries like South Africa test positive for HIV infection. In severely affected countries such as Zambia, one teacher dies every day from HIV/AIDS. For every teacher that successfully completes an education course, two die. This devastation in the educational workforce takes a huge toll on African schools.

Fortunately, increasing the quantity and quality of the teaching force in developing countries is a primary goal for many organizations, such as the World Bank and UNESCO. UNESCO’s Teacher Education Section has created a comprehensive teacher education program, and has begun to implement it in twenty countries using UNESCO field offices there. The World Bank, too, focuses on teachers when it comes to education. In particular, the World Bank works to stop HIV/AIDS from continuing to kill teachers in Africa.

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Literacy is a cornerstone of education. The ability to read and write is a basic skill required for any kind of economic advancement in life. UNESCO’s Literacy Portal website says that “literacy is an indispensable means for effective social and economic participation, contributing to human development and poverty reduction.”

Literacy is essential to education and poverty alleviation.

To help the estimated one billion illiterate people worldwide learn to read and write, UNESCO has adopted a multi-pronged approach to the issue. UNESCO works to change the educational policies of governments so that they emphasize literacy in their educational program and advocates the benefits of literacy using local and national media. UNESCO has outlined these strategies in a comprehensive literacy strategy known as ‘LIFE’ – Literacy Initiative for Empowerment – which is set to run from 2005 to 2015.

The World Bank also supports literacy efforts, through education and literacy programs that specifically target adults. It has conducted 100 such programs over 30 years.

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Chelala, Cesar. HIV/AIDS delivers heavy Blow to Third World Education. 2004.

Fighting Poverty through Education in Venezuela. 2000.

IRP: Education and Poverty. 2005.

Lazarus, David. Education can crush poverty. 2005.

Opening Doors: Education and the World Bank.

UNESCO Literacy Portal. 2005.

UNESCO: Primary Education.

UNESCO: Teacher Training. 2004.

World Bank: Education FAQ. 2005.

World Bank: Secondary Education. 2005.

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