Taking stock and looking forward

Education systems are the engine rooms of sustainable economic development, generating the essential skills on which wider social progress rests. However, in many countries, and increasingly in developing economies, educational standards are detrimentally low. This is rarely considered a humanitarian crisis, even though it is a root cause of youth unemployment and the multiplicity of destructive social and economic forces that stem from it. The world over, governments are responsible for schools and universities, and it is a truism to say that education is in the interest of all stakeholders. The right to learn and deploy our brains to the greater good is a powerful human motivator.