👨‍🏫 For the Teacher

• • Run this as an 18-minute timed IELTS Academic reading practice in class.
• • Have students check answers in pairs before reviewing the detailed explanations together.

🎓 For the Learner

• • Read the pinned passage A–D carefully before attempting any questions.
• • Answer all 10 questions from easy to hard, then check your answers using the evidence provided.

Reading Passage

Sanitation and Clean Toilets: WHO 2024 Report

The World Health Organization, or WHO, says that 58 percent of the world's people, about 4.8 billion, used a safely managed sanitation service in 2024. It says that 3.4 billion people still lacked one. The United Nations also gives the figure of 3.4 billion on its World Toilet Day page.

WHO says that 354 million people still practised open defecation in 2024. This means that they went to the toilet in the open, for example behind bushes or into open water. WHO says that the number has fallen by 429 million since 2015.

WHO says that unsafe sanitation causes about 564,000 deaths a year, mostly from diarrhoea. It also says that a large part of diarrhoeal disease can be prevented with safe drinking water and good sanitation. The United Nations marks World Toilet Day on 19 November. It says that safe toilets help women and girls to go to school and to work.

I think these figures show that real progress has been made, but it seems that the problem is still very big, and the 2024 numbers may change when the next report appears. The figures count people and not toilets, so I do not think they tell us how clean or safe each toilet is.

1. A description of what open defecation involves.

2. An explanation of how safe toilets benefit female education and employment.

3. A mention of the limitation of statistics that track individuals rather than sanitation facilities.

4. The number of people practising open defecation was lower in 2024 than in 2015.

5. The 2024 statistical report provides an accurate measurement of the cleanliness of individual toilets.

6. Most newly constructed toilets were built in rural school districts.

7. Why does the writer mention the United Nations figure alongside the World Health Organization figure in Paragraph A?

8. What is the writer's attitude towards the 2024 sanitation statistics in Paragraph D?

According to the World Health Organization, unsafe sanitation leads to approximately [9] ____ deaths a year, mostly from [10] ____ . Furthermore, the United Nations marks World Toilet Day on 19 November to highlight that safe toilets assist women and girls in attending school and joining the workforce.