The global learning crisis — and what to do about it
00:13
我是一个大胆的领导决策的产物。 1956年以后，突尼斯赢得了独立。 我们第一任总统，哈比卜·布尔吉巴 决定将国家预算的20% 投入教育行业。 是的，20%。 这个比例以当今社会的标准来看 仍然是很高的。
00:35
一些人发出了抗议。 基础建设怎么办？ 电力、道路和自来水怎么办？ 这些都不重要吗？ 我会说， 最重要的基础设施 是我们的大脑， 受过教育的大脑。 布尔吉巴总统帮助为 每一个男孩和女孩 提供了自由、高品质的教育。 和其他几百万 突尼斯人民一样， 我深深地感激 那个历史性的决策。
01:10
那就是我今天站在这里的原因。 因为当下我们正面临着 一个全球学习危机。 我称之为学习危机 而不是教育危机 因为，超过2.5亿的孩子 如今辍学， 更有甚者，3.3亿的孩子 在学校却没有学到知识。 如果我们什么都不做， 如果这个现状得不到改变， 那么到2030年， 仅仅是13年以后， 这个世界上一半的小孩和年轻人， 0.8亿的小孩和年轻人， 要么离开学校， 要么没有学习。
01:58
两年前，我加入了教育委员会。 这是一个由前任英国总理 以及联合国全球教育事务特使 戈登·布朗发起的组织。 我们的第一要务是要弄清楚 这个学习危机有多大？ 这个问题的实际范围是什么？ 现在我们知道了， 到2030年， 世界上一半的小孩 将不会学习。 我们就是这样发现 我们应该将世界的焦点 从学校转移到学习上， 从只是数一数 教室里有多少人， 到实际上有多少人在学习。
02:37
我们的第二大任务是， 我们能做什么吗？ 对这个巨大却悄无声息， 也许是最被广泛忽略 的国际危机，能做些什么？ 我们发现的是，我们可以。 这实际上是非常棒的。 我们第一次可以 使每一个孩子进入学校并学习， 仅仅在一代人的时间里就能实现。 我们甚至不需要去发明 完成这个任务的工具。 我们只需向班级中 最优秀的同学学习， 但不是任何班级最优秀的—— 是你们班级中最优秀的。
03:16
我们将国家根据收入水平分类： 低收入，中等收入以及高收入。 我们观察教育领域 发展最快的25%所做的， 然后我们发现， 如果每个国家在他们现有收入水平下 的发展速度都和领航者一样快， 那么仅仅在一代人的时间内 我们就可以让每一个小孩上学并学习。
03:44
举一个例子。 以突尼斯为例。 我们不要求 突尼斯和芬兰发展得一样快， 此处对芬兰没有不敬的意思。 我们会告诉突尼斯， 看看越南， 他们为中小学生做了相似的投资， 按人均国内生产总值的GDP计算， 但如今得到了更好的结果。 越南对识字和算术 采用了标准化评估， 相比于其它的发展中国家， 越南的老师被更好地管理， 并且学生的成就被公开。
04:20
结果表明， 在2015年的PISA， 也就是国际学生评估项目， 越南超过了许多 富裕的经济体， 包括美国。
04:34
如果你不是一个教育专家， 你可能会问，有什么不同吗？ 所有的国家不都是 监督同学的进步并公布成就吗？ 不，答案是否定的。 我们远不是那样。 只有一半的发展中国家 在小学有系统的学习评估， 在初中这个比例更小。
04:59
所以如果我们不知道 孩子们是否在学习， 老师们应该如何把精力 集中在展现教学成果上？ 各国应该如何将教育投资优先 应用于展现教学成果， 如果他们不知道 孩子们是否在学习？
05:17
这就是为什么在投资之前 的首次大变革 是保证教育系统是 能够展现教学成果的。 因为如果对无效的系统 投更多的钱， 只会滋长更低的效率。
05:34
令我深感忧虑的是， 如果孩子们去了学校却不学习， 这就降低了教育的价值， 使教育支出贬值， 那么政府和政党可能会说， “我们已经在教育上 投入了大量的资金， 但孩子们没有学习， 他们没有合适的技能， 也许我们应该减少投入。”
05:54
改善当代教育系统 并使之以结果为向导 是很重要的，但这还不够。 对于没有足够的 合格教师的国家呢？ 以索马里为例， 如果索马里的每个学生 都成为了老师—— 每个完成高等教育的人 都成为了老师—— 我们还是不会有足够的老师。 那么难民营中的孩子呢？ 或者在偏远地区的孩子呢？
06:23
以菲力佩为例。 菲力佩住在一个沿着亚马逊流域 有着几千社区的群落里。 他所在的78人构成 的小村庄中有20个家庭。 菲力佩和一个同学 是2015年仅有的 两个就读11年级的同学。 亚马逊是巴西 西北部的一个州， 面积是德国的4.5倍， 完全被热带丛林和河流所覆盖。
06:51
10年前，菲力佩和他的同学 只有两个选择。 一个是到省会马瑙斯市继续求学， 另一个是一起停止求学， 这也是多数人的选择。 然而，2009年， 巴西通过了一项新的法案， 即每个巴西人都 必须接受中等教育， 到2016年，每个州都 有义务全面推行该法案。 但是接受高质量的教育 在亚马逊州是非常昂贵的。
07:24
你如何在那些社区找到 数学、科学和历史老师呢？ 即使你找到了老师， 他们中很多都不愿意去。 面对这项几乎不可能的任务， 公务员和国家官员 展现了惊人的创造力 和企业家精神。 他们发展了以媒体为中心的解决方法， 具体来说是这样的。
07:46
在马瑙斯市，你有专业的， 受过训练的老师， 通过直播 向分散的社区中 超过1000多个课堂授课。 每个班级有5到25个学生， 他们有一个通晓全科目的助教 辅导他们的学习和发展。 在马瑙斯市的60个老师 与那些社区中的2200多个助教协作， 根据背景和时间定制教学计划。
08:20
为什么 在老师和助教之间的分工很重要呢？ 首先，正如我所说的， 因为在很多国家， 我们没有足够的合格的教师。 其次，老师要做的事情太多， 这些事要么是他们没受过训练的， 要么不是他们份内的事。
08:39
以智利为例。 在智利，每个医生 有4.5个 职工协助他们， 智利仅仅代表了 低水平的人员配置， 因为在发展中国家， 平均每个医生 有10个人协助他们。 然而，在智利，一个老师 只有少于0.5个人， 准确的说，是0.3个人协助他们。
09:09
想象一个医院病房 有20，40，70个病人， 这个病房只有一个医生独自奋战： 没有护士，没有医疗助理， 没有别的人。 你会说这简直荒谬， 而且不可能， 但这就是全球教师行业的现状， 一个教室有20，40或者70个学生。
09:31
所以老师和助教的分工是很棒的， 因为它在改变教学模式， 每个人都发挥自己最大的作用， 这样孩子们就不仅仅是在学校， 而且是真正在学习。 一部分教师群体 成为了名师， 他们中的一些人参加竞选， 他们提高了这个行业的地位， 于是更多的学生想成为老师。
09:58
我喜欢这个例子的原因 在于它不仅仅 改变了教学的模式， 还教会我们如何利用科技来学习。 直播是双向的， 所以像菲力佩那样的学生 可以提供反馈信息。 我们都知道科技 并不总是完美的。 州政府官员估计， 每天5%-15%的教室 连不上直播， 因为洪水，天线断裂 或是网络故障。 然而，到目前为止， 菲力佩是超过30万 从以媒体为中心的 教学方式中受益， 并获得初中教育的学生中的一员。
10:38
这是一个生动的例子， 说明科技不仅仅是一个附加物， 更可以是学习的中心， 帮助我们将教育带给孩子， 如果我们不能将孩子们 带到学校去的话。
10:54
我知道 你们会说， “我们如何在全球范围内实施呢？” 我自己曾在政府工作， 也见证了推行最好 的方案是多么困难。 所以作为一个委员会， 我们发起了两项倡议， 让“学习的一代”成为现实。
11:13
第一个倡议是：先驱国家倡议。 超过20个来自亚非的国家 承诺教育为先， 并通过改革，产生有效的教育体制。 我们通过一种 “交付方法”培训了国家领导人。
11:29
这一方法有两个方面： 在规划阶段，我们把 所有人带到一个房间—— 教师，教师工会，家长联合会， 政府官员，非政府组织，所有人—— 这样我们提出的改革和解决方法 就能被所有人分享和支持。
11:46
在第二阶段， 它会有特别的影响， 就好像是对后续工作的 一种果断关注。 那么每周下来，你检查成果， 那个有没有完成， 什么是应该完成的， 甚至有时候把一个人 送到一个地区或者学校 去检查实际成果， 而不是仅仅希望它奏效。 这也许听起来是一个常识， 但却并不是一个常见的做法， 这就是为什么很多改革失败了。
12:18
这种方法在坦桑尼亚试行。 在那里中等教育学生的毕业率 在仅仅2年多的时间内提高了50%。
12:33
下一个让“学习的一代” 成为现实的倡议 是融资，谁为这些事情买单呢？ 我们认为 国内融资必须是 教育投资的中坚力量。 你们还记得我之前提到越南 在国际学生评估项目中超过了美国？ 这不仅仅是因为 一个更好的教育体系， 也因为越南增加了教育投入， 在20年间从国家开支 的7%上升到20%。
13:01
但是如果各国为了教育 而借债会发生什么呢？ 如果你借钱来筑路建桥， 这很简单明了， 但是教育不同。 向人们描绘一座桥的未来 比描述一个受过教育 的大脑来得容易。 那是一项长期的工作。
13:23
所以我们想到了一种解决方法， 来帮助各国走出中等收入困境， 那些不至于赤贫或 不再贫穷的国家， 它们无法从补助金 或者无息贷款中受益， 同时因为它们不够富裕， 无法为它们的贷款 获得有吸引力的利息。 所以我们应该把投资人的钱 集中在一个教育融资机构中， 这个机构可以为 教育提供更多资金。 我们会资助或者甚至完全免除 贷款利息， 这样，那些承诺改革的国家 可以借到资金， 改革他们的教育体系， 他们可以慢慢还钱， 同时从受过良好教育 的群体中受益。 这个方法得到了上次 在德国举办的G20峰会的认可， 如今，教育终于被 提上了国际议程。
14:14
让我把这个问题拉回个人层面， 因为这是最终产生影响的地方。 如果没有那个 投资年轻国家教育的决定， 那个将20%国家预算 投入教育行业的决定， 我不可能接受教育， 更不要说在2014年， 在政府中担任部长职务， 并成功结束过渡阶段。
14:40
2015年，突尼斯获得 的诺贝尔和平奖 作为从阿拉伯之春中 展现的唯一民主， 这也是那个大胆领导决策的结果。 教育是民权斗争， 是我们这代人的人权斗争。 全民素质教育 是我们必须赢得的自由战争。 谢谢。
15:05
（观众掌声）
TED
Programs & initiatives
TEDx
TED Fellows
TED Ed
TED Translators
TED Books
TED Institute
The Audacious Project
Ways to get TED
Podcasts
More ways to get TED
Follow TED
YouTube
TED Blog
Our community
TED Speakers
TED Fellows
TED Translators
TEDx Organizers
TED Community
Manage TED Recommends Profile
Watch your recommendations
Edit your profile
Adjust your settings
TED Talks Usage Policy
Privacy Policy
Advertising / Partnership
TED.com Terms of Use
Jobs
Press
Help
© TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved.
Activity Feed
00:13
I'm the product of a bold leadership decision. After 1956, when Tunisia became independent, our first president, Habib Bourguiba, decided to invest 20 percent of the country's national budget in education. Yes, 20 percent, on the high end of the spectrum even by today's standards. Some people protested. What about infrastructure? What about electricity, roads and running water? Are these not important?
00:44
I would argue that the most important infrastructure we have are minds, educated minds. President Bourguiba helped establish free, high-quality education for every boy and every girl. And together with millions of other Tunisians, I'm deeply indebted to that historic decision.
01:10
And that's what brought me here today, because today, we are facing a global learning crisis. I call it learning crisis and not education crisis, because on top of the quarter of a billion children who are out of school today, even more, 330 million children, are in school but failing to learn. And if we do nothing, if nothing changes, by 2030, just 13 years from now, half of the world's children and youth, half of 1.6 billion children and youth, will be either out of school or failing to learn.
01:58
So two years ago, I joined the Education Commission. It's a commission brought together by former UK Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown. Our first task was to find out: How big is the learning crisis? What's actually the scope of the problem? Today we know: half of the world's children by 2030 will be failing to learn. And that's how actually we discovered that we need to change the world's focus from schooling to learning, from just counting how many bodies are in classrooms to actually how many are learning. And the second big task was, can we do anything about this? Can we do anything about this big, vast, silent, maybe most-neglected international crisis? And what we found out is, we can. It's actually amazing. We can, for the first time, have every child in school and learning within just one generation. And we don't even have to really invent the wheel to do so. We just need to learn from the best in class, but not any best in class -- the best in your own class.
03:16
What we did is actually we looked at countries by income level: low-income, mid-income, high-income. We looked at what the 25 percent fastest improvers in education do, and what we found out is that if every country moves at the same rate as the fastest improvers within their own income level, then within just one generation we can have every child in school and learning.
03:44
Let me give you an example. Let's take Tunisia for example. We're not telling Tunisia, "You should move as fast as Finland." No disrespect, Finland. We're telling Tunisia, "Look at Vietnam." They spend similar amounts for primary and secondary pupils as percentage of GDP per capita, but achieves today higher results. Vietnam introduced a standardized assessment for literacy and numeracy, teachers in Vietnam are better monitored than in other developing countries, and students' achievements are made public. And it shows in the results. In the 2015 PISA -- Program for International Student Assessment -- Vietnam outperformed many wealthy economies, including the United States.
04:34
Now, if you're not an education expert, you may ask, "What's new and different? Don't all countries track student progress and make those achievements public?" No. The sad answer is no. We are very far from it. Only half of the developing countries have systematic learning assessment at primary school, and even less so at lower secondary school.
04:59
So if we don't know if children are learning, how are teachers supposed to focus their attention on delivering results, and how are countries supposed to prioritize education spending actually to delivering results, if they don't know if children are learning?
05:17
That's why the first big transformation before investing is to make the education system deliver results. Because pouring more money into broken systems may only fund more inefficiencies. And what deeply worries me -- if children go to school and don't learn, it devalues education, and it devalues spending on education, so that governments and political parties can say, "Oh, we are spending so much money on education, but children are not learning. They don't have the right skills. Maybe we should spend less."
05:54
Now, improving current education systems to deliver results is important, but won't be enough. What about countries where we won't have enough qualified teachers? Take Somalia, for example. If every student in Somalia became a teacher -- every person who finishes tertiary education became a teacher -- we won't have enough teachers. And what about children in refugee camps, or in very remote rural areas?
06:23
Take Filipe, for example. Filipe lives in one of the thousands of communities alongside the Amazonas rivers. His village of 78 people has 20 families. Filipe and a fellow student were the only two attending grade 11 in 2015. Now, the Amazonas is a state in the northwest of Brazil. It's four and a half times the size of Germany, and it's fully covered in jungle and rivers. A decade ago, Filipe and his fellow student would have had just two alternatives: moving to Manaus, the capital, or stopping studying altogether, which most of them did. In 2009, however, Brazil passed a new law that made secondary education a guarantee for every Brazilian and an obligation for every state to implement this by 2016. But giving access to high-quality education, you know, in the Amazonas state, is huge and expensive. How are you going to get, you know, math and science and history teachers all over those communities? And even if you find them, many of them would not want to move there. So faced with this impossible task, civil servants and state officials developed amazing creativity and entrepreneurship. They developed the media center solution. It works this way. You have specialized, trained content teachers in Manaus delivering classroom via livestream to over a thousand classrooms in those scattered communities. Those classrooms have five to 25 students, and they're supported by a more generalist tutoring teacher for their learning and development. The 60 content teachers in Manaus work with over 2,200 tutoring teachers in those communities to customize lesson plans to the context and time.
08:20
Now, why is this division between content teacher and tutoring teacher important? First of all, as I told you, because in many countries, we just don't have enough qualified teachers. But secondly also because teachers do too many things they're either not trained for or not supposed to do.
08:39
Let's look at Chile, for example. In Chile, for every doctor, you have four and a half people, four and a half staff supporting them, and Chile is on the low end of the spectrum here, because in developing countries, on average, every doctor has 10 people supporting them. A teacher in Chile, however, has less than half a person, 0.3 persons, supporting them.
09:09
Imagine a hospital ward with 20, 40, 70 patients and you have a doctor doing it all by themselves: no nurses, no medical assistants, no one else. You will say this is absurd and impossible, but this is what teachers are doing all over the world every day with classrooms of 20, 40, or 70 students.
09:31
So this division between content and tutoring teachers is amazing because it is changing the paradigm of the teacher, so that each does what they can do best and so that children are not just in school but in school and learning. And some of these content teachers, they became celebrity teachers. You know, some of them run for office, and they helped raise the status of the profession so that more students wanted to become teachers.
09:58
And what I love about this example is beyond changing the paradigm of the teacher. It teaches us how we can harness technology for learning. The live-streaming is bidirectional, so students like Filipe and others can present information back. And we know technology is not always perfect. You know, state officials expect between five to 15 percent of the classrooms every day to be off live-stream because of flood, broken antennas or internet not working. And yet, Filipe is one of over 300,000 students that benefited from the media center solution and got access to postprimary education. This is a living example how technology is not just an add-on but can be central to learning and can help us bring school to children if we cannot bring children to school.
10:54
Now, I hear you. You're going to say, "How are we going to implement this all over the world?" I've been in government myself and have seen how difficult it is even to implement the best ideas. So as a commission, we started two initiatives to make the "Learning Generation" a reality. The first one is called the Pioneer Country Initiative. Over 20 countries from Africa and Asia have committed to make education their priority and to transform their education systems to deliver results. We've trained country leaders in a methodology called the delivery approach. What this does is basically two things. In the planning phase, we take everyone into a room -- teachers, teacher unions, parent associations, government officials, NGOs, everyone -- so that the reform and the solution we come up with are shared by everyone and supported by everyone. And in the second phase, it does something special. It's kind of a ruthless focus on follow-up. So week by week you check, has that been done, what was supposed to be done, and even sometimes sending a person physically to the district or school to check that versus just hoping that it happened. It may sound for many common sense, but it's not common practice, and that's why actually many reforms fail. It has been piloted in Tanzania, and there the pass rate for students in secondary education was increased by 50 percent in just over two years.
12:33
Now, the next initiative to make the Learning Generation a reality is financing. Who's going to pay for this? So we believe and argue that domestic financing has to be the backbone of education investment. Do you remember when I told you about Vietnam earlier outperforming the United States in PISA? That's due to a better education system, but also to Vietnam increasing their investment from seven to 20 percent of their national budget in two decades.
13:01
But what happens if countries want to borrow money for education? If you wanted to borrow money to build a bridge or a road, it's quite easy and straightforward, but not for education. It's easier to make a shiny picture of a bridge and show it to everyone than one of an educated mind. That's kind of a longer term commitment.
13:23
So we came up with a solution to help countries escape the middle income trap, countries that are not poor enough or not poor, thankfully, anymore, that cannot profit from grants or interest-free loans, and they're not rich enough to be able to have attractive interests on their loans. So we're pooling donor money in a finance facility for education, which will provide more finance for education. We will subsidize, or even eliminate completely, interest payments on the loans so that countries that commit to reforms can borrow money, reform their education system, and pay this money over time while benefiting from a better-educated population. This solution has been recognized in the last G20 meeting in Germany, and so finally today education is on the international agenda.
14:14
But let me bring this back to the personal level, because this is where the impact lands. Without that decision to invest a young country's budget, 20 percent of a young country's budget in education, I would have never been able to go to school, let alone in 2014 becoming a minister in the government that successfully ended the transition phase. Tunisia's Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 as the only democracy that emerged from the Arab Spring is a legacy to that bold leadership decision. Education is the civil rights struggle, it's the human rights struggle of our generation. Quality education for all: that's the freedom fight that we've got to win.
15:03
Thank you.
15:05
(Applause)