For a brief time last week, 12 fifth-grade Chautauqua students were dismayed to learn they could no longer attend school, forced out for myriad reasons.

“I got to go to school for three years but then had to leave because my family did not have enough money to pay the fees,” said one.

“The village school is too far away,” said another, “and my family cannot afford the shoes to make the long journey, so I am not able to go to school.”

“My parents can afford to send only one child, and they have chosen my brother,” said a third.

The students were taking part in the annual Global Action Week sponsored by the Global Campaign for Education and RESULTS, an advocacy organization that promotes solutions to poverty in the United States and worldwide.

The international effort highlighted a sobering statistic: Some 70 million children in developing nations are not in school. In Doug Swan’s class on Tuesday, 26 Chautaqua students learned why.

Twelve students — representing the proportion of elementary-aged children in Africa for whom the schoolhouse doors are closed — suddenly found out they could no longer read or write. Using scripts provided to them, the stood before their classmates and described the overwhelming obstacles that make school out of reach for them.

They told about parents who had died, leaving behind younger siblings in need of care; about schools 10 miles away and no school buses to provide transportation; about the daunting feat of paying for school fees that can equal a month’s income.

In Africa, one out of two girls will not complete primary school. For more than 17 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean, the need to work interferes with their ability to attend school.

The kids also learned that those lucky fifth-graders who got to stay in school still face enormous barriers. Classes in Africa can have up to 100 children and no textbooks, and teachers often have little training.

“I learned that some countries are so much poorer than I thought,” said Sam Richardson, one student. “When we first tried to guess how many kids weren’t in school, I thought it was around 70,000. Seventy million is a huge number. And to learn that something as little as a pair of shoes could keep a kid from going to school.”

“It had a real impact on me,” said Sage Levin, who used his allowance to buy a Care Card at Thriftway after the lesson.

The Week of Action also gave students the opportunity to do something to help their peers around the world. After learning that the United States and 180 other countries have committed to ensuring universal access to primary education for all children by 2015 but have yet to provide adequate financing to make it happen, the fifth graders made posters asking Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to keep this commitment and support education for all children.

“We are from Vashon Island where we have a free education,” read one poster. “We believe that other kids around the world should have the same opportunity also. The future of those 70 million kids is in your hands.”

For the last three years, volunteers from RESULTS’ Vashon chapter have presented the educational program in classrooms and churches on the Island. Last year, after letters written by a group of Vashon seventh graders were hand-delivered to Sen. Patty Murray’s office, the senator co-sponsored the Education for All Act. The act, if passed, would “ensure that the U.S. provides the resources and leadership to ensure a successful international effort to provide all children with a quality basic education.”

The fifth graders hope Cantwell will follow suit.

— Lesley Reed, a freelance writer, works for RESULTS.