Print this pageAfricaUNESCO: Poor Quality Education Costing BillionsBy William EagleJanuary 29, 2014 10:37 AMAn instructor teaches students in Lodwar, Turkana, Kenya. He supplements his teachers salary with a small shop managed by him and his wife. (K. Prinsloo/ ARETE/UNESCO)In recent years, there’s been a global effort to expand universal access to primary school and provide all children a sound foundation for continuing on to lower secondary school. But a yearly monitoring report by UNESCO’s Education for All effort says governments are losing about $129 billion dollars per a year on poor quality education. As a result, about one in four students in poor countries -- about 175 million young people -- are not able to read a complete sentence.  UNESCO says several factors, including poor teacher training and cutbacks in funding, account for underperforming educational systems. Education specialist Pauline Rose, the director of the 2013 Global Monitoring Report by UNESCO’s program Education for All,  said sub-Saharan Africa would need about 225,000 additional teachers per year to achieve universal primary education by 2015,  or nearly 60% of the global total.