Pre-primary education

Pre-primary or preschool education is targeted at children below the official primary school starting age. The content of national programs of pre-primary education varies, but the common goal is to introduce children to a school-type environment. Such programs set the foundation for lifelong learning and help countries reach the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.

The Global Education Digest 2005 from UNESCO has statistics on participation in pre-primary education for the school year 2002/03. The net enrollment ratio (NER) is listed for 149 countries, the gross enrollment ratio (GER) for 180 countries. The NER is the share of children of preschool age who are enrolled in preschool. The GER is the number of children in preschool, regardless of age, divided by the population of preschool age.

• NER = number of children of preschool age in preschool / number of children of preschool age
• GER = number of children in preschool / number of children of preschool age

The maximum value for the NER is 100% while the GER can exceed 100%. In a previous post I demonstrated that the difference between NER and GER at the primary level can be quite large. This is often the case in Sub-Saharan Africa because of delayed entry into primary school. At the pre-primary level, the difference between NER and GER is much smaller, as a comparison of the two maps below shows.

For most countries the pre-primary NER and GER lie in the same range although there are notable exceptions, among them Australia, South Korea, and the Ukraine. For this reason, and because the GER is available for more countries, I focus on the GER to describe participation at the pre-primary level of education.

Pre-primary net enrollment ratio, 2002/2003

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.

Pre-primary gross enrollment ratio, 2002/2003

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.

The lower graph presents the pre-primary GER in the school year 2002/03. The GER is above 80% in most industrialized countries, but also in some countries of East Asia (for example Malaysia and Thailand), Latin America (for example Cuba and Mexico), and Eastern Europe (Belarus and Russia). The pre-primary GER is lowest in Africa and the Middle East, with most countries in the range below 20%. Low GER values are also observed in Central, South, and East Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa this pattern of low participation continues at the primary level, while in East Asia primary school enrollment rates are significantly higher.

Friedrich Huebler, 25 July 2005, Creative Commons License.

Transition from primary to secondary education

Statistics on primary and secondary school enrollment from the Global Education Digest 2005 by UNESCO indicate that few children in Africa continue their education past the primary level. The percentage of children enrolled in the last grade of primary school who continue their education at the secondary level is known as the transition rate from primary to secondary education.

The following graph shows the transition rate from primary to secondary education for 147 countries for which the Global Education Digest 2005 has data. The blue circles indicate the transition rate in each country. The red marks indicate the average transition rate in each region and the 95% confidence interval for this average.

Transition rate from primary to secondary education, 2002/03

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.
Note: Regional averages are weighted by each country's population of primary school age.

Worldwide, 85% of children in the last grade of primary school go on to attend secondary school (see the table below). Only two regions have transition rates below this global average: Eastern and Southern Africa (67.1%), and West and Central Africa (52.4%). Transition rates are highest in the industrialized countries (98.2%) and in Eastern Europe and the CIS countries (96.1%). However, even in Sub-Saharan Africa some countries have transition rates above 80%.

Transition rate from primary to secondary education, 2002/03

Region	Transition rate (%)
	Male	Female	Total
East Asia, Pacific	89.8	89.7	89.7
Eastern and Southern Africa	67.4	66.6	67.1
Eastern Europe, CIS	98.8	98.7	96.1
Industrialized countries	98.1	98.1	98.2
Latin America, Caribbean	92.0	91.3	91.0
Middle East, North Africa	86.4	86.1	86.3
South Asia	84.5	89.5	86.8
West and Central Africa	54.6	49.4	52.4
World	84.4	85.4	85.1

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.
Note: Regional values are weighted by each country's population of primary school age.

The difference between male and female transition rates is negligible, except for two regions: South Asia, and West and Central Africa. In South Asia, girls are more likely to transfer to secondary school; the transition rate is 89.5% for girls and 84.5% for boys. In West and Central Africa, the opposite can be observed; here the transition rate is 54.6% for boys and 49.4% for girls. Girls in this region are thus doubly disadvantaged. Not only do they have very low primary school enrollment rates, they are also less likely to continue their education at the secondary level.

Friedrich Huebler, 17 July 2005, Creative Commons License

Primary and secondary school enrollment

Not all children who attend primary school continue their education at the secondary level. At the global level, the secondary school net enrollment ratio (NER) is 59.3%, compared to a primary school NER of 83.8%, but primary and secondary school participation vary widely between individual countries. With data from the Global Education Digest 2005 by UNESCO the correlation between primary and secondary school enrollment can be analyzed.

In the graph below, the primary school NER is plotted along the horizontal axis and the secondary school NER along the vertical axis. 151 countries are shown, with symbols that indicate the UNICEF region to which they belong. For the remaining countries the Global Education Digest contains no data on primary or secondary school enrollment.

Primary and secondary school net enrollment ratio, 2002/03

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.

The secondary school NER does not increase proportionally with primary school enrollment. In 19 of the countries in the graph, the primary school NER is less than 70%; in 17 of these countries the secondary school NER does not rise above 30%. All countries in this group are from Africa or the Middle East. If the primary school NER in a country is above 70%, children are much more likely to continue their education at the secondary level. However, even in this group many countries, mostly from Africa, are struggling to raise secondary school enrollment.

In the following table, all countries are grouped according to the primary school NER. For each group, the average secondary school NER and the number of countries in the group are listed. Secondary school enrollment does increase with primary school enrollment but for countries with a primary school NER above 70% this increase in secondary school enrollment is relatively steeper. In the 86 countries with a primary school NER above 90%, on average three out of four children of secondary school age (73.8%) go to secondary school.

Average secondary school net enrollment ratio by level of primary school net enrollment, 2002/03

Primary school NER	Average secondary school NER (%)	Number of countries
30 to 39.9%	8.0	3
40 to 49.9%	18.8	2
50 to 59.9%	24.4	6
60 to 69.9%	25.8	8
70 to 79.9%	36.4	12
80 to 89.9%	53.3	34
90 to 100%	73.8	86
Total	59.7	151

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.
Note: Average values are weighted by each country's population of secondary school age.

Friedrich Huebler, 10 July 2005, Creative Commons License