By admin 
Education and its importance
The importance of education, especially in developing countries, cannot be limited. Education is the basic element for lifting individuals and societies out of poverty, because the knowledge gained from science gives children the confidence necessary to complete the educational process and thus achieve dreams in a better way and help future generations. It also helps in creating major and different changes in adults, especially in their daily lives, from nutrition, education, and health care, which makes them a good role model for their children and encourages them to learn.
The impact of poverty on education
Poverty is defined as a state in which people lack material possessions; such as money, and the necessary means to meet their basic needs. It is associated with several characteristics; such as poor health, low levels of skills and education, and inability to work, as well as negative, undisciplined behaviors such as vandalism, extravagance, and others. It also has negative effects on the individual and society alike.
Despite the importance of the role of education in improving the lives of the poor around the world, researchers have confirmed the impact of poverty on learning and education of the child as well, as there are studies that have confirmed in their research the existence of a direct link between low income and chronic health problems, psychological disorders, social and academic functions, and additional research has also provided evidence that poverty reduces the child’s readiness for school through several factors, including; the prevalence of poverty, its depth, its duration, its concentration, crime in the student’s community and the impact of poverty on social networks.
Poverty creates major challenges that hinder children’s lives, especially in the field of education, as governments spend small portions of their GDP on education, making it unavailable to poor families and of lower quality, due to crowded classrooms, broken computers, and unqualified teaching staff. All of these conditions do not meet the needs of students. Although schools are usually free, there are some additional costs of providing school uniforms, buying books, and transportation that students need to move around, especially in rural areas, in addition to the money that poor families lose by sending their children to school instead of working to earn a living.
There are many statistics that have been conducted to reveal the impact of poverty on education, including the statistics of the Urban Institute, which showed that 30% of children suffering from poverty do not complete the secondary stage of their academic life, which reduces the rates of economic success, as well as the rates of job opportunities, which leads to poverty as an adult. These statistics were shocking because they showed the impact of poverty on the student’s ability to succeed through:
School Preparation
School preparation depends on cognitive development in children, as children who suffer from poverty are less prepared to enter kindergarten, which helps in developing their knowledge, as low-income families do not have enough time to read to their children and do not have enough money to send them to kindergarten, and their family environment is generally unstable, unlike high-income families, which are usually able to provide the necessary funds to develop their children’s cognitive abilities and prepare them to enter kindergarten.
School Attendance
Chronic school absenteeism occurs at a rate ranging between three and four times in poor areas, as the majority of absent students are from the poor class, due to the surrounding circumstances of daily pressures from raising siblings, high rates of disease, and the prevalence of violence in their community, as well as due to constant movement in search of job opportunities.
Bullying
There are some studies that have been conducted that confirm that students from poor families are more vulnerable to bullying than others, and that schools that suffer from economic disparity, where there is a large difference between families, have a higher rate of bullying than other schools, as some families are wealthy and others are very poor.
Educational and cognitive achievement
Children living in poor environments are often exposed to stress and tension, which leads to a decrease in intelligence and cognition rates, and a lack of social skills, which negatively affects attention and concentration. Therefore, educational and cognitive achievement is very low in poor societies, because they listen to and participate in mutual conversations less than others, and therefore do not have a sufficient vocabulary to keep up with these characteristics. Therefore, it is important to create an alternative environment for children to reduce the effects of poverty on them. This task is based on the parents, as children are able to adapt to the circumstances that are created for them easily, which will play an important role in improving their lives. It is enough to create a kind of hope in their lives to make them attached to the future, and it can also change their minds for the better.
School Behavior
Strong and secure relationships in families help stabilize children’s behavior and provide the basics needed to build social skills, and teach them healthy emotional responses that suit the daily situations they are exposed to, but for children from poor families, they usually fail to learn these responses, due to their lack of these relationships, all at the expense of their established performance.
The pressures that a child experiences from a disturbed home environment due to poverty and living conditions negatively affect the child’s learning and behavior, so that he tends to direct this pressure into negative behavior at school, and has a disturbed social, academic and health ability, which makes him distracted and focused and has a weak memory, and his depression rate is high, and reduces his social and creative skills.