VOA慢速英语:Study Reveals Economic Impact of Uneducated Children

[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, [00:02.37]this is the Education Report. [00:05.24]A new study finds a lack of education [00:08.99]for young children in developing nations [00:11.95]seriously affects the country's economic progress. [00:16.25]The organization Results for Development [00:20.62]called R4D performed the study. [00:24.73]The Non-Governmental group is based in Washington D.C. [00:29.10]Its study says children who are not attending primary school [00:34.64]are an unused source of economic growth for their country. [00:40.01]R4D says it performed the study because it was worried [00:45.38]about a growing worldwide problem in education. [00:49.81]The group found 57 million children of primary school age [00:55.48]are not in school, [00:57.73]most of them are from sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. [01:03.66]Milan Thomas works for R4D. [01:06.87]He says there has been progress [01:09.54]in reducing the number of children who do not attend school, [01:14.57]but he says that progress has slowed in recent years. [01:19.04]He says there is no disagreement that children [01:22.95]with basic education can look forward to a better life. [01:27.57]"The benefits associated with primary education [01:29.82]are really undisputed at this point [01:31.63]because there are countless studies [01:32.92]showing that children who complete basic education [01:35.13]tend to enjoy better health [01:36.68]and higher incomes over their lifetimes," said Thomas. [01:38.94]But he says even though the value of education is known, [01:43.26]it is important to find new ways of proving that value. [01:48.04]So the organization led its work with the question, [01:52.50]"what is the estimated cost to a nation's economy [01:57.15]of its out–of-school children? " [01:59.91]The study uses information [02:02.12]from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, [02:05.89]as well as studies of developing labor markets. [02:09.26]The results estimate the losses suffered [02:12.67]by 20 developing countries [02:14.63]if more young children can not get basic education. [02:19.50]Milan Thomas says the study also considered earnings [02:23.52]the children not attending primary school would never receive. [02:29.03]He says the research found that it is far more costly [02:33.46]in sub-Saharan Africa to have primary school age children [02:38.55]out of school than to educate them. [02:41.65]He notes the cost to provide all children with primary education [02:46.33]is much less than the average cost of not providing the schooling. [02:52.64]He says the cost of educating children [02:55.43]is more than the value of a full year’s [02:59.15]average economic growth for five countries in the study: [03:03.88]they are Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mali, Senegal and Yemen. [03:10.23]Mr Thomas says the cost of children being out-of-school in Senegal [03:15.17]is nearly 8 percent of the country's total goods and services. [03:20.80]He said Nigeria has the highest number [03:24.12]of out-of-school children — 10 million. [03:27.08]He said that will cost the country billions of dollars. [03:31.65]He says he hopes the study will prove to local governments [03:35.73]and policy makers the value of a basic education for all children. [03:41.90]And he says he hopes it will move them to provide that education [03:46.57]to primary school age children in their country. [03:50.18]And that's the VOA Learning English Education Report. [03:55.15]I'm Christopher Cruise.

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