Education can stop 500,000 child brides – UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) according to highlights pre-released from the next Education for All Global Monitoring Report at a school in New York, said the analysis has provided fresh proof that investing in education, especially for girls alleviates extreme poverty.Still on empowering females in these regions, UNESCO said if young […]

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) according to highlights pre-released from the next Education for All Global Monitoring Report at a school in New York, said the analysis has provided fresh proof that investing in education, especially for girls alleviates extreme poverty.
Still on empowering females in these regions, UNESCO said if young women completed primary schooling, 340,00 early births by 3.4 million young girls below 17 would be prevented and if they completed secondary school it would fall by two million.
In the report, across 18 sub-Saharan African countries, those of voting age with primary education were found to be 1.5 times more likely to express support for democracy than those with no education, and the level doubles among those who have completed secondary education.
Findings also showed that a secondary, rather than a primary education, increases tolerance towards people of a different religion or those speaking a different language.
UNESCO also said if all children, regardless of their background and circumstances, had equal access to education in the next 40 years, per capita income would be 23 per cent higher in a country with equality in education.
“The findings confirm more clearly than ever that education can transform lives and societies for the better,” said Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO.
“The world’s education goals are very much an unfinished agenda. However, this new evidence should give us all renewed energy to complete what we set out to do.”
The report said across 29 mostly developed countries, 25% of people with less than secondary education expressed concern for the environment, compared with 37% of people with secondary education and 46% of people with tertiary education.
The Director of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, Pauline Rose, said: ‘The huge benefits of a quality education are sometimes invisible to donors and policy-makers, so education often slips off the global agenda. Today’s analysis presents undeniable proof that this should change.  If the world leaders meeting in New York next week want development goals after 2015 to succeed, they must recognize education’s central role.”
The full analysis of the report will be available when the Education for All Global Monitoring Report is released in January 2014.