Global report on out-of-school children

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and UNICEF have jointly published a new report, Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children. The report, launched at the Education World Forum in London on 19 January 2015, presents the latest global statistics on out-of-school children, examines the barriers faced by marginalized groups and proposes policy solutions, and estimates the cost of universal basic education.

The report draws attention to the fact that the world will miss the Education for All goal and Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015. 58 million children of primary school age (typically 6 to 11 years) and 63 million adolescents of lower secondary school age (typically 12 to 15 years) are still out of school and many of them will never set foot in a classroom. Although the numbers of out-of-school children and adolescents are similar, in relative terms lower-secondary-age adolescents are twice as likely to be out of school as primary-age children, with out-of-school rates of 17% and 9% respectively.

The report draws on findings from the joint UIS-UNICEF Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children (OOSCI). This initiative began in 2010 and has led to the publication of a series of national and regional studies on out-of-school children. OOSCI, which is also supported by the Global Partnership for Education and Understanding Children's Work, has three overarching goals:

1. Develop comprehensive profiles of excluded children using consistent and innovative statistical methods.
2. Link these profiles to the barriers that lead to exclusion.
3. Identify, promote and implement sound policies that address exclusion.

To accompany the publication of the global report, the UIS released an interactive data visualization that illustrates the multiple and overlapping causes of exclusion from education with household survey data from more than 20 countries.

Screenshot of UIS data visualization on out-of-school children

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Reference

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 2015. Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children. Montreal: UIS. Download in PDF format (6.4 MB).

External links

• Announcement of report on UIS website
• Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children (OOSCI)
• National and regional OOSCI reports
• UIS data visualization on out-of-school children: English, French, Spanish
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UNICEF
• Global Partnership for Education
• Understanding Children's Work
• Education World Forum
• Education for All goals
• Millennium Development Goals

Related articles

• Out-of-school children and adolescents, 2000-2012
• 61 million out-of-school children in 2010
• Children of primary and secondary school age out of school
• Children out of school: Global trend 1999-2008
• Trends in primary school enrollment, 1970-2004
• Universal primary education by 2015: A goal out of reach?
• Global population of primary school age, 2000-2015
• Population structure and children out of school
• National wealth and school enrollment
• Survival rate to the last grade of primary school
• Transition from primary to secondary education
• Regional disparities in school life expectancy
• School attendance among 5- to 24-year-olds in Liberia

Friedrich Huebler, 31 January 2015, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2015/01/oosc.html