UNICEF notes unreliable electricity creates barriers to school attendance, retention and learning.
Source
UNICEF — https://www.unicef.org/innovation/stories/innovation-across-borders-pakistan. Verified in source set / retroactive normalization pending.
What it proves
Education outcomes depend on infrastructure beyond classrooms/teachers.
How to deploy: Use UNICEF notes unreliable electricity creates barriers to school attendance, retention and learning. (UNICEF notes unreliable electricity creates barriers to school attendance, retention and learning., 2025) to support the claim that Education outcomes depend on infrastructure beyond classrooms/teachers.
What it does not prove: This is UNICEF's identification of a barrier, not a measured effect size: it attaches no number to how many of the 25.1m out-of-school children would return under reliable power. Unreliable electricity also travels with poverty, remoteness and weak school infrastructure, so it cannot be isolated as an independent cause of non-attendance.
Memory hook: No reliable power → attendance, retention and learning all break before pedagogy does
Rebuts the claim: "Out-of-school numbers are a schools-and-teachers problem" — UNICEF ties attendance, retention and learning losses to unreliable electricity, an energy-sector failure.