World falling behind on 2015 education goal

Read the full article by David Alexander in Reuters AlertNet.

"Access to education increased dramatically over the past century but 323 million children worldwide are still not in school and efforts to achieve universal primary education by 2015 are likely to fail, a new study said on Wednesday.

"Despite the findings, the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences said the goal of providing a high-quality education to all children could be achieved at a reasonable cost with more support and funding from governments worldwide.

"'There's no question that it's possible," said David Bloom, one of the authors of the study. "It's a question of financial resources and it's a question of political will.'

"'We have cost estimates, for example, of what it would take and we're looking at numbers that are less than what the U.S. is spending on an annual basis in Iraq and Afghanistan,' he said. The United States is currently spending about $8 billion a month on the Iraq war."

Click here for the website for the Academy report Educating All Children: A Global Agenda.