Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

A child who cannot read a simple sentence or handle a two-digit sum by the end of primary school does not recover the ground later; the years that follow are spent on material that assumes what was never learnt. Everything built on top of that base, secondary schooling, technical training, the skilled work an economy is counting on, rests on it, and none of it can compensate for its absence. Adding institutes at the top of a system whose foundation is missing produces certificates rather than capability, and it is the foundation that is cheapest to fix and least often funded.

Which one of the following statements best reflects the crux of the passage?