The Report Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters, identifies deep and persistent disparities based on income, gender, location, ethnicity and other markers for disadvantage as a major barrier to progress in education. Inequity in education is linked to wider disparities in the distribution of power, wealth and opportunity. And it is perpetuated by policies that either tolerate or actively exacerbate an unfair distribution of life chances – policies that fuel the transmission of poverty across generations.
Inequalities in education of the magnitude observed in many countries are unacceptable. The circumstances into which children are born, their gender, the wealth of their parents, their language and the colour of their skin should not define their educational opportunities. Apart from being inequitable, large disparities in education are inefficient: they hold back economic growth and progress in other areas.
Learning Change 