The academic achievement gap between children and young people from disadvantaged and affluent backgrounds in the UK remains substantial. Historically this has always been the case and repeatedly, one government after the other, despite their ambitions to reduce it, have failed to deliver real change. All of this in a modern, western country.

Yet this isn’t, of course, exclusive to our island. Throughout the world, the chasm between rich and poor is bigger than ever - those from deprived families are less likely to succeed in the same manner as those who are comparably better off. And while this is manifest in both developed and developing countries, the latter remains adrift.

Markedly so in fact, as Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, explained in a recent article for the BBC. So, how far behind? Well, by as much as a century, which is quite flabbergasting.

“When it comes to average levels of attainment - how much children have learnt and how long they have spent in school - there remains a massive gap,” she noted. “When it's shown as an average number of years in school and levels of achievement, the developing world is about 100 years behind developed countries.

“These poorer countries still have average levels of education in the 21st century that were achieved in many western countries by the early decades of the 20th century.”

This startling stat, it is worth reminding, is the current status quo. More worryingly - and that is saying something - if nothing is done to change this, to transform current approaches to education across the world, this divide will worsen, reinforcing a certain level of ineptitude on the part of nations to resolve this longstanding crisis.

Now, more than ever, argues Ms Winthrop, we are in a position to make a profound difference. While the 100-year divide is, as the expert notes, “morally unacceptable”, it is from a historical perspective “understandable”. It was only until the mid-19th century that education was accepted as being the right of all young people in Europe and North America. It would be another century, before that idea became global.

As Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states: Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

The challenge for world leaders, prominent academics and thinkers, school teachers and enterprises that specialise in matters to do with education is pushing forward new approaches, concepts and schemes that will not only put a stop to this gap, but reduce it significantly.

That is easier said than done, as, after all, look at where current and historic practices, attitudes and models have got us. We need innovation, not the kind that has to be quantifiable. As the 20th century artist Henri Matisse famously said: “Creativity takes courage.” His body of work was, throughout his life, consistently remarkable. Education can be also.