This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Kavita Puri.

Each week, one question, four expert witnesses, and an answer.

Peter has no parents and lives in an orphanage.

He attends his local school in Kenya and is lucky to have a teacher who

recognizes his ability. She teaches him to read and write and gives him books.

They talk for hours discussing them.

He makes it to secondary school.

Years later, this teacher meets Peter at a conference.

He's now a director of education. He even supports 10 members of his community.

His life has turned around. He's a success story and it

all began as it so often does across the world with reading.

You might think that lives transformed through education is a common enough story.

But statistically, many in Peter's position from a rural school in a developing nation

would not have had such opportunities.

A recent study by UNESCO found that hundreds of millions of children

in low and middle income countries don't have basic levels of reading.

What's surprising is that all these children have been in school for years. The World Bank described this as a great injustice and said that

society had failed them. So why are those children not as lucky as Peter? This week

we're asking why can't our children read?

Part one, the long walk to school. When we were growing up, teachers were considered to be the most educated.

And I used to see the kind of respect, you know, they commanded in the community.

Thank you. community. Our first witness is Jacqueline Jumbo Kahura. She's been a

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