Crisis'll keep kids out of school, says UNESCO

THE United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has warned that the world financial crisis could sabotage poor countries' efforts to get more children into school.

UNESCO has therefore urged more funding and attention for those shut out of educational systems such as ethnic minorities and rural girls, who make up a disproportionate part of the legions of school-age children who have never seen the inside of a classroom.

"The main message is that education is at risk, that we might have a lost generation because the financial gap of what resources that are needed for education and those that are provided are widening - especially with the crisis," UNESCO's chief, Irina Bokova, said at the launch of the report at UN headquarters in New York.

Some 72 million children were out of school in 2007, and the report estimates that 56 million will remain out of school in 2015.

"Rich countries have mobilised a financial mountain to stabilise their financial systems and protect vital social and economic infrastructure, but they have provided an aid molehill for the world's poor," the chief author of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Kevin Watkins, said in a statement.

As the global financial market crisis hit economies worldwide, wealthy countries cut back on their aid to poor countries, even as the developing countries themselves suffered budget shortfalls and slashed their own education spending, the report stated.