Every school day, nearly 100,000 Malaysian children go to class with uncorrected vision.
Children with refractive errors - such as short or long-sightedness or astigmatism - are unable to see blackboards and books, ultimately learning much less than their peers.
To mark World Sight Day 2024 on Oct 10, new research from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and the Seva Foundation shows that a child with poor vision learns approximately only half as much as a child with good or corrected vision.
This translates directly into lifetime earnings for the individual; for example, if a five-year-old is provided with glasses in primary school and continues to wear them until they are 18, they will earn, on average, 96.3% more over their lifetime than if they never had their vision corrected.
If these children were to get glasses, Malaysia would stand to gain 37,112 years of schooling annually, amounting to a future economic productivity boost of over RM3.15bil. This amounts to nearly half the total allocation towards technical and vocational education and training (TVET) education for 2024.
Seva Foundation chief economist Brad Wong said this very first global estimate of actual learning losses associated with poor vision shows just how important it is to get glasses when you need them.
“Most often, we are talking about simple refractive errors, which are easy to correct - but which, if uncorrected, have a detrimental effect on both the individual child and society as a whole,” he said in a press release.
Most often, refractive errors go uncorrected simply because they have not been found - it is common for people to skip eye tests, or not have access to them.
The researchers estimate that half the learning loss could be avoided with more vision screenings and provision of glasses, and another half through ensuring that children wear their glasses when they need them.
To mark World Sight Day, children from around the world are re-imagining the ‘Glasses of the Future’ in a competition facilitated by the IAPB as part of World Sight Day and the Love Your Eyes campaign.
From Kenya to Brazil and India, the competition asks children to use their creativity to raise awareness of the need for checks. At a political level, interventions to improve access to vision screenings and glasses are highly cost-effective, with a return on investment being as large as $65 per $1 investment. The IAPB points to eye health interventions as a key way to address the global learning crisis.
IAPB chief executive officer Peter Holland said early intervention, regular eye checks and access to good quality eye care and glasses are critical to unlocking education opportunities and children’s future economic potential. “Eye health in young people is not an optional extra - it is vital to their and our future,” he said.
* The economic loss is measured in purchasing power parity (PPP) in international dollars.
