12 years of quality education for all children and promoting lifelong learning opportunities is fundamental to young people reaching their full potential, as set out in Sustainable Development Goal 4.  

Over the last two decades, we have seen significant improvement in access to education across all our study countries, with vastly increased school and university enrolment rates and reduced overall levels of student dropout.

Yet despite these gains, overall learning outcomes remain shockingly low with significant and widening inequalities in educational achievements both across and within our study countries. Addressing the growing learning crisis involves delivering on every child’s right to basic foundational skills, including basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Young Lives unique mixed methods data on education is collected through our household and school surveys, in-depth interviews with children and their families, teachers and head teachers, and pioneering research on how cognitive, socio-emotional and job-related skills develop.

With this data now covering two decades, we can track the skills development and educational and learning journeys of our study participants from infancy through to early adulthood. Our comprehensive data allows us to evaluate  the causes and consequences of inequality in education and learning, by exploring individual characteristics, skills and aspirations, family circumstances and expectations, and school effectiveness, and how this affects securing work and forming families.

Our evidence shows that intersecting inequalities impact skills development and learning outcomes from very early in life, with children from the poorest households, in rural areas, and from minority status backgrounds consistently underperforming. Malnutrition experienced in early childhood can not only cause physical stunting but can significantly affect the development of important cognitive skills, such as vocabulary and basic mathematics, with longer term consequences for the development of socio-emotional skills such as self-esteem, self-efficacy and agency.

Gender gaps in learning emerge more strongly around 12 years of age and continue to widen into early adulthood. Interestingly girls are not always disadvantaged; for example, girls have lower aspirations and underperform in learning outcomes in India, but have higher aspirations and outperform boys in Vietnam.  

Where gender intersects with other inequalities, such as wealth, rural location and minority status, adolescent learning and outcomes are more profoundly affected. Girls who drop out of school, especially in rural areas and among poorer households, are much more likely to be married off early by their parents, than those who stay in education. Likewise, early motherhood puts girls at much greater risk of dropping out of school, as well as having detrimental effects on the health of the baby. 

Poor quality teaching, inadequate school infrastructure and inaccessibility, violence in schools and inflexible school systems also affect students from poor households the most.

Our longitudinal evidence shows that early life inequalities have later life consequences.  Early childhood exposure to malnutrition can have long term consequences on later socio-emotional skills such as self-esteem, self-efficacy and agency.  Poor skills development and lower aspirations can affect access to higher education and the ability to secure a decent job. Conversely, stronger skills and aspirations are associated with reduced levels of risky behaviour and teenage pregnancy. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating inequalities in education following the closure of schools and universities and disrupted classes. Evidence from our 2020 phone survey shows that it is young people from poor households and rural communities, especially vulnerable girls and young women, who have been hardest hit by interrupted education.  Persistent learning gaps, worsened by a digital divide in online learning, has left a substantial proportion of vulnerable young people at risk of being left behind and never returning to the classroom.   

Our 2021 phone survey will continue to examine the impact of the pandemic on unequal education and learning, with a strong focus on higher education and gendered transitions to the labour force.

We will focus on the impact of global and national crises on education and learning, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and conflict, in order to help build the resilience of vulnerable communities.

Improving our understanding of the additional barriers faced by vulnerable girls and young women in achieving 12 years of quality education, and how gender differences in educational and learning outcomes affect transitions to the labour force and getting a decent job, will also be a key focus area of research.

We are also taking forward pioneering new research to investigate skills formation, including foundational cognitive skills, the relationship between cognitive, socio-emotional and job-related skills, and their role in shaping learning trajectories, and determining schooling attainment and employment outcomes later in life.