124 million out-of-school children in 2013

New estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that approximately 124 million children and adolescents were out of school in 2013. Of this number, 59 million were of primary school age and 65 million were of lower secondary school age. The entrance ages and durations of primary and lower secondary education vary between countries, but primary school age is typically 6-11 years and lower secondary school age is typically 12-15 years.

The estimate for 2013 represents a decrease by 72 million from 2000, when about 196 million children and adolescents were out of school (see Figure 1). Most of this decrease occurred between 2000 and 2007 but since 2007 there has been hardly any progress in reducing the global out-of-school population. In the most recent period there was even a slight increase in the number of out-of-school children and adolescents.

Figure 1: Global number of out-of-school children, 2000-2013

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

The primary and lower secondary out-of-school rates in 2013 - the percentage of children in these age groups who were not enrolled in primary or secondary education - were 9% and 17%, respectively (see Figure 2). Adolescents of lower secondary school age were thus nearly twice as likely to be out of school as children of primary school age. For the combined population of primary and lower secondary age the out-of-school rate was 12% in 2013.

The trend in the out-of-school rate mirrors the evolution of the number of out-of-school children and adolescents. In 2000, the primary out-of-school rate was 15% and the lower secondary out-of-school rate was 25%. Like the number of out-of-school children, the out-of-school rate fell steadily until 2007 and has remained at nearly the same level since then.

In spite of the lack of progress towards lower out-of-school rates and numbers in recent years, the gap between boys and girls has continued to decrease. At the global level, girls are still more likely to be out of school than boys but the difference between the female and male out-of-school rates fell between 2000 and 2013 from 6 percentage points to 2 percentage points for primary-age children and from 5 percentage points to 1 percentage point for lower-secondary-age adolescents.

Figure 2: Global rate of out-of-school children, 2000-2013

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Because of the lag between the collection of national enrollment figures and the release of global out-of-school estimates by the UIS the number of out-of-school children and adolescents in 2015 is not yet known. Nevertheless, it is already clear that the Education for All goal and Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015 cannot be reached.

A joint fact sheet by the UIS and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report contains more detailed analysis of the most recent out-of-school data and explains that current international aid for primary and secondary education is insufficient, especially for the world's poorest countries.

External links

• Announcement of out-of-school estimates for 2013 by the UIS
• Fact sheet "A growing number of children and adolescents are out of school as aid fails to meet the mark" (PDF, 424 KB)
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre
• Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR)
• Education for All goals
• Millennium Development Goals

Related articles

• Global report on out-of-school children
• 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

Friedrich Huebler, 20 July 2015, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2015/07/oos.html

EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015

The Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015 was published by UNESCO on 9 April 2015. The title of this year's edition of the EFA GMR is Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges”.

2015 is the target year for the six Education for All goals, as well as the eight Millennium Development Goals. The GMR takes stock of progress since 2000 and points out that in spite of substantial improvement in all areas of education many countries are likely to miss one or more of the EFA goals. The reference year for the report is 2012, the most recent year with data for most countries and regions at the time the report was prepared, but the GMR also makes some use of projections.

• Goal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children: 47% of countries reached the goal but 20% of countries are very far from the goal.
• Goal 2: Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality: 52% of countries achieved this goal, 38% of countries are far from the goal.
• Goal 3: Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes: 47% of countries have reached universal lower secondary enrolment.
• Goal 4: Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults: Only 25% of countries reached this goal, 32% of countries are very far from the goal.
• Goal 5: Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality: The GMR estimates that 69% of countries will achieve gender parity in primary education by 2015, and 48% of countries will reach the goal in secondary education.
• Goal 6: Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills: The pupil-teacher ratio fell in 121 of 146 countries between 1990 and 2012 but there are still not enough teachers for all children in and out of school.

The GMR also presents important lessons for international goals in the area of education for the post-2015 period.

Reference

• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 2015. Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges - EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015. Paris: UNESCO. Download in PDF format (6.8 MB).

External links

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015 (official site)
• EFA Global Monitoring Reports (archive with all reports published since 2002)
• Education for All goals
• UNESCO
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008

Friedrich Huebler, 25 April 2015, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2015/04/gmr.html

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

Out-of-school children and adolescents, 2000-2012

The Education for All goal and Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015 is the most prominent international goal in the field of education. Over the past years it has become increasingly apparent that the world will not reach this goal by the target year. New statistics, released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics on 26 June, confirm that the number of out-of-school children has remained at nearly the same level since 2007.

In 2012, the latest year with data, an estimated 58 million children of primary school age (typically between 6 and 11 years) were out of school, representing 9% of the global population in this age group. Between 2000 and 2007, the global number of out-of-school children fell from 100 million to 60 million in 2007, but since then there has been virtually no progress towards universal primary education (see Figure 1).

30 million out-of-school children, more than half of the global total in 2012, lived in sub-Saharan Africa. A further 10 million lived in South and West Asia, a reduction by more than two thirds from the 34 million out-of-school children in this region in 2000. 18 million children of primary school age were out of school in the remaining regions in 2012.

Girls account for the majority (53%) of the global out-of-school population, mainly due to gender disparities in sub-Saharan Africa, where 13 million boys and nearly 17 million girls were not in school in 2012.

Figure 1: Out-of-school children of primary school age, 2000-2012

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2014.

In addition to the 58 million out-of-school children of primary school age, 63 million adolescents of lower secondary school age were not in school in 2012. This number is equivalent to 17% of the global population of lower secondary school age, typically between 12 and 15 years. In 2000, the global number of out-of-school adolescents was 97 million. Similar to the number of out-of-school children of primary school age, the number of out-of-school adolescents of lower secondary school age decreased steadily between 2000 and 2007, but since then progress has been much slower (see Figure 2).

South and West Asia had the largest number of out-of-school adolescents in 2012, 26 million, followed by sub-Saharan Africa with 21 million and the rest of the world with 15 million. In contrast to the gender disparity observed among the out-of-school population of primary school age, the global population of out-of-school adolescents in 2012 was 50% male and 50% female.

Figure 2: Out-of-school adolescents of lower secondary school age, 2000-2012

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2014.

For additional information on out-of-school children and adolescents, read the policy paper Progress in getting all children to school stalls but some countries show the way forward, published jointly by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report in June 2014.

External links

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR)
• Announcement of new out-of-school figures on UIS website
• Announcement of new out-of-school figures on World Education Blog by EFA GMR
• UIS/EFA GMR policy paper Progress in getting all children to school stalls but some countries show the way forward (PDF): English, French, Spanish
• Education for All (EFA) goals (UNESCO)
• Millennium Development Goals (United Nations)

Related articles

• 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, 30 June 2014, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2014/06/oos.html

EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4

The Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 was published by UNESCO on 29 January 2014. The title of this latest edition of the EFA GMR is Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all.

The report calls attention to the fact that none of the six Education for All goals will be achieved at the global level by the 2015 target year, including the goal of universal primary education (goal 2).

• Goal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
• Goal 2: Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.
• Goal 3: Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.
• Goal 4: Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.
• Goal 5: Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.
• Goal 6: Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

In addition to the tens of millions of children who remain excluded from education, millions more who attend school suffer from a poor quality of education. The EFA GMR 2013/4 emphasizes that teachers are the key to improving education quality and proposes several strategies to achieve good quality education for all.

Reference

• UNESCO. 2014. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 - Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all. Paris: UNESCO. (Download in PDF format, 13.8 MB)

External links

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 (official site)
• EFA Global Monitoring Reports (archive with all reports published since 2002)
• Education for All goals
• UNESCO

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008
• 61 million out-of-school children in 2010
• National, regional and global literacy trends, 1985-2015
• Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school
• Pupil/teacher ratio in secondary school
• A view inside primary schools

Friedrich Huebler, 23 February 2014 (edited 9 March 2014), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2014/02/gmr.html

National literacy trends, 1985-2015

The report Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015 by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) provides literacy data for 151 countries for the years since 1985. In addition to historical data, the UIS report contains projections for 2015, the target year of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. Regional trends in adult literacy were discussed previously on this site. This article takes a closer look at national trends in adult and youth literacy.

Figures 1 and 2 present all national literacy data from the UIS database for the period 1985 to 2015 by region. Each line represents the data for one country. Single markers mean that only data for one year was available for a country. The first eight segments of each figure contain data for the countries within each region: Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The "World" segment combines the data from all regions. In both figures, national trendlines are color coded according to the level of the earliest available literacy rate to facilitate distinguishing between individual countries and identifying the difference between the earliest and latest value for each country.

A comparison of adult literacy rates (for the population aged 15 years and older) in Figure 1 and youth literacy rates (for the population aged 15 to 24 years) in Figure 2 shows that youth literacy rates are generally higher than adult literacy rates. This is a reflection of the fact that younger generations are typically more likely to be able to read and write than older generations, except as countries reach universal literacy, as in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North America and Western Europe. The spread between the countries with the lowest and highest literacy rates is also smaller for youths than for adults. In South and West Asia, for example, the adult literacy rate is expected to range from 60% in Pakistan to 99% in the Maldives in 2015. By comparison, the youth literacy rate is expected to range from 77% in Pakistan to nearly 100% in the Maldives in the same year. This increase in literacy rates over time can be observed in nearly all countries with data.

Please consult the report published by the UIS for further analysis of adult and youth literacy. The statistical annex of the report contains all national adult and youth literacy rates shown in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1: Adult literacy rate (population 15 years and older) by region and country, 1985-2015

Note: National trendlines are color coded according to the earliest value for each country.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf.

Figure 2: Youth literacy rate (population 15-24 years) by region and country, 1985-2015

Note: National trendlines are color coded according to the earliest value for each country.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf.

References

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf (940 KB).

Related articles

• National, regional and global literacy trends, 1985-2015
• Adult and youth literacy in 2011
• Trends in adult literacy, 1990-2008
• Disparity between male and female literacy rates
• Disparity between adult and youth literacy
• Years of schooling and literacy: Can everyone with primary education read and write?
• Years of schooling and literacy, part 2
• Adult literacy in sub-Saharan Africa

External links

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre
• UIS page for International Literacy Day 2013, with interactive world map with adult and youth literacy rates
• Education for All (EFA) (UNESCO)
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (UN Development Programme)

Friedrich Huebler, 30 November 2013, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2013/11/literacy.html

National, regional and global literacy trends, 1985-2015

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has released a new report on literacy (UIS 2013). The report, Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015, contains a comprehensive overview of literacy data for 151 countries and territories from seven regions: Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. A summary of the most recent literacy rates and estimates of the illiterate population is accompanied by historical data for the period since 1985 and projections to 2015, the target year of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals.

The table and figure below present adult literacy rates, for the population 25 years and older, at the regional and global level between 1990 and 2015. In spite of persistent illiteracy in some parts of the world - see the article "Adult and youth literacy in 2011" - the adult literacy rate has increased in all regions since 1990. The global adult literacy rate grew from 76% in 1990 to 82% in 2000 and 84% in 2011, the most recent year with data. (In the report, 1990 data refer to the period 1985-1994, 2000 data to the period 1995-2004, and 2011 data to the period 2005-2011.)

Progress at the regional level has varied. In three regions - Arab States, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa - approximately half of all adults were illiterate in 1990. In the Arab States, the adult literacy rate increased by 22% between 1990 and 2011. In South and West Asia, the adult literacy rate increased by 16% over the same period. In sub-Saharan Africa, progress was much more modest, with an increase in the adult literacy rate of only 6%. East Asia and the Pacific is approaching universal adult literacy, and Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia were already near universal literacy in 1990. No regionally representative data are available for North America and Western Europe.

Adult literacy rate (population 25 years and older) by region, 1990-2015

Region	Adult literacy rate (%)
	1990	2000	2011	2015 projection	2015 target
Arab States	55.2	67.5	76.9	79.2	83.8
Central and Eastern Europe	96.0	97.4	98.5	98.0	98.7
Central Asia	97.9	99.0	99.5	99.6	99.5
East Asia and the Pacific	81.9	94.5	94.7	95.8	95.8
Latin America and the Caribbean	85.7	89.7	91.6	92.8	94.9
North America and Western Europe	-	-	-	-	-
South and West Asia	46.7	58.9	62.8	70.4	79.5
Sub-Saharan Africa	53.2	57.2	59.1	63.6	78.6
World	75.7	81.9	84.1	86.1	91.0

Note: 1990 data are for the period 1985-1994, 2000 data are for 1995-2004, 2011 data are for 2005-2011.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf.

The EFA goals, adopted at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, call for a "50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015" (UNESCO 2005). For monitoring, this goal is typically interpreted to mean a reduction of the adult illiteracy rate by 50% between 2000 and 2015. EFA goals were set for countries, not regions, but for the analysis in the UIS report, target values were also calculated at the regional and global levels. At the global level, for example, halving adult illiteracy between 2000 and 2015 implies a target adult literacy rate of 91% for the year 2015.

Adult literacy rates are projected to increase in almost all regions between 2011 and 2015. The exception is Central and Eastern Europe, where projections indicate a small drop in adult literacy. The global adult literacy rate is projected to reach 86% in 2015, meaning that the target literacy rate would be missed by 5%. As the figure below shows, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to be furthest from the 2015 target, with an estimated adult literacy rate of 64%, 15% below the target of 79%. South and West Asia is projected to reach an adult literacy rate of 70% in 2015, 9% below the target for 2015. Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific are projected to reach or come within one percentage point of the 2015 target.

Adult literacy rate (population 25 years and older) by region, 1990-2015

Notes: (1) Regions sorted by the projected literacy rate of the adult population in 2015. (2) 1990 data are for the period 1985-1994, 2000 data are for 1995-2004, 2011 data are for 2005-2011.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf.

The UIS report contains more detailed information on adult literacy rates and the adult illiterate population, youth literacy rates (for the population 15-24 years) and the youth illiterate population, historical trends and projections to 2015, a summary of UIS methodology in the area of literacy, and an annex with six statistical tables and 151 figures with national literacy data.

References

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2013. "Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985-2015". UIS information paper. Montreal: UIS. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/literacy-statistics-trends-1985-2015.pdf (940 KB).
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 2005. Education for All: Literacy for Life - EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001416/141639e.pdf (7 MB).

Related articles

• Adult and youth literacy in 2011
• Trends in adult literacy, 1990-2008
• Disparity between male and female literacy rates
• Disparity between adult and youth literacy
• Years of schooling and literacy: Can everyone with primary education read and write?
• Years of schooling and literacy, part 2
• Adult literacy in sub-Saharan Africa

External links

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre
• International Literacy Day (8 September)
• UIS page for International Literacy Day 2013, with interactive world map with adult and youth literacy rates
• Education for All (EFA) (UNESCO)
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (UN Development Programme)

Friedrich Huebler, 27 October 2013, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2013/10/literacy.html

EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012

The Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2012 - Youth and skills: Putting education to work was published by UNESCO on 16 October 2012. As all previous reports, the 2012 edition describes progress towards the six Education for All goals.

• Goal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
• Goal 2: Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.
• Goal 3: Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.
• Goal 4: Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.
• Goal 5: Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.
• Goal 6: Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

The Global Monitoring Report 2012 also takes a closer look at skills and skill development programs for urban and rural youth.

Reference

• UNESCO. 2012. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012 - Youth and skills: Putting education to work. Paris: UNESCO. (Download in PDF format, 8.8 MB)

External links

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012 (official site)
• EFA Global Monitoring Reports (archive with all reports published since 2002)
• Education for All goals
• UNESCO

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008

Friedrich Huebler, 28 October 2012 (edited 9 March 2014), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/10/gmr.html

61 million out-of-school children in 2010

61 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2010, down from a high of over 110 million out-of-school children in the mid-1990s, according to new estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 32 million or 53% of the 61 million out-of-school children were girls.

The trend in out-of-school numbers since 1990 is illustrated in Figure 1. Much of the global progress over the past 15 years is due to developments in South and West Asia, where the number of out-of-school children fell from a high of 41 million in 1998 to 13 million in 2010.

Progress in sub-Saharan Africa, another region with a historically large number of out-of-school children, has been much more modest, by comparison. Here, the number of children out of school decreased from a high of 43 million in 1996 to 31 million in 2010. As a result, sub-Saharan Africa today is home to half of all out-of-school children worldwide.

In relative terms, the global out-of-school rate fell from 18% in the early 1990s to 9% in 2010, in spite of a large increase in the number of children of primary school age over the same period. However, the estimates by UIS also show that the out-of-school rate and the number of out-of-school children have stagnated over the past three years, partly because sub-Saharan Africa is struggling to increase enrolment rates in primary education while being confronted with continued strong population growth. At this rate, the world is unlikely to reach the Millennium Development Goal and Education for All goal of universal primary education by 2015.

Figure 1: Global number of out-of-school children of primary school age, by region and sex, 1990-2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, July 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

The regional distribution of children in and out of school is illustrated in Figure 2. The width of each region in the graph indicates the size of the population of primary school age. The height of the bars indicates which proportion of children in each region is in or out of school.

In absolute terms, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of children out of school (31 million), although its primary school-age population (132 million) is smaller than that of two other regions: South and West Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific. In relative terms, Sub-Saharan Africa also has the highest out-of-school rate of all regions. 23% of all primary school-age children have either never attended school or left school without completing primary education.

In South and West Asia, the proportion of out-of-school children (8%) is smaller than in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab States, but in absolute terms, the region is home to 13 million out-of-school children, second only to sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of all out-of-school children in South and West Asia live in only two countries: India (2.3 million) and Pakistan (5.1 million).

East Asia and the Pacific has 168 million children of primary school age, nearly as many as South and West Asia, but only 4% are out of school. Still, due to the large primary school-age population in the region, this means that 7 million children are excluded from education.

The remaining regions have significantly fewer children out of school: Arab States (5.0 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (2.7 million), North America and Western Europe (1.3 million), Central and Eastern Europe (0.9 million), and Central Asia (0.3 million).

Figure 2: Global distribution of children of primary school age in and out of school, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, July 2012. - CA = Central Asia, CEE = Central and Eastern Europe, LAC = Latin America and the Caribbean, NAWE = North America and Western Europe. - Figure 2 was created with the spineplot add-on for Stata (Cox 2008). - Click image to enlarge.

Related articles

• 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

External links

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre
• UIS announcement of new out-of-school data, June 2012
• UNESCO e-Atlas of Out-of-School Children
• Reaching Out-of-School Children is Crucial for Development, UIS Fact Sheet no. 18, June 2012 (PDF, 833 KB)
• UNICEF-UIS Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children
• Millennium Development Goals
• Education for All goals
• Cox, Nicholas J. 2008. "Speaking Stata: Spineplots and their kin." Stata Journal 8 (1): 105-121. http://www.stata-journal.com/article.html?article=gr0031.

Friedrich Huebler, 31 July 2012 (edited 2 August 2012), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/04/oos.html

Education for All regions

For monitoring of progress towards the six Education for All (EFA) goals, the world has been divided into eight EFA regions:

• North America and Western Europe
• Central and Eastern Europe
• Central Asia
• East Asia and the Pacific
• South and West Asia
• Arab States
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Latin America and the Caribbean

These regions, shown in the map below, are used in publications like the EFA Global Monitoring Report by UNESCO or the Global Education Digest by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Regions for monitoring of Education for All goals


Combined, the eight EFA regions cover 204 countries and territories. Two EFA regions - East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean - are further divided into two sub-regions.

Composition of EFA regions

• North America and Western Europe (26 countries and territories)
  Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
• Central and Eastern Europe (21 countries)
  Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine.
• Central Asia (9 countries)
  Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
• East Asia and the Pacific (33 countries and territories)
  East Asia (16 countries and territories)
  Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Macao (China), Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Viet Nam.
  Pacific (17 countries and territories)
  Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
• South and West Asia (9 countries)
  Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.
• Arab States (20 countries and territories)
  Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mauritania, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
• Sub-Saharan Africa (45 countries)
  Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Swaziland, Togo, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• Latin America and the Caribbean (41 countries and territories)
  Latin America (19 countries)
  Argentina, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of).
  Caribbean (22 countries and territories)
  Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands.

References

• UNESCO. 2011. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011: The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education. Paris: UNESCO. Annex, p. 269. (Download in PDF format, 6.4 MB)
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2010. Global education digest 2010: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal: UIS. Annex, p. 274-275. (Download in PDF format, 8 MB)

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011
• Global Education Digest 2010
• Children out of school: Global trend 1999-2008
• Children of primary and secondary school age out of school
• Regional disparities in school life expectancy

External links

• Education for All (EFA)
• EFA goals
• UNESCO education
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre

Friedrich Huebler, 26 March 2011, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2011/03/efa.html

EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011

The Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011 was released by UNESCO on 1 March 2011. This year's edition of this annual report has the title The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education. The report documents the impact of violent conflict on education and the long-lasting negative effects on educational attainment and literacy.

Today, 28 million or over 40 percent of all children out of school (67 million worldwide) live in countries affected by conflict, although these countries are home to only 116 million or 18 percent of the global population of primary school age (653 million) (see Figure 1). (Only out-of-school children in low and lower-middle income conflict-affected countries were counted to arrive at the total of 28 million. In addition, for large countries like India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan, only children living in conflict-affected areas were included in the 28 million children affected by conflict.) In conflict areas, the out-of-school rate is around 24 percent, compared to 7 percent in other parts of the world. Children affected by armed conflict are thus more than three times as likely to be out of school as other children.

Conflict-affected countries also have some of the lowest levels of literacy. In these countries, only 79 percent of youth between 15 and 24 years and 69 percent of adults are literate, compared to 93 percent of youth and 85 percent of adults in other countries.

War does not only destroy lives and schools, it also diverts resources from education to military spending. The Global Monitoring Report documents how lack of access to education or exposure to the wrong kind of education can contribute to persistent inequality, prejudice and renewed armed conflict, a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.

Lastly, the Global Monitoring Report 2011 examines the role of development assistance in conflict-affected countries and argues for increased and more effective aid for the education sector.

Figure 1: Population of primary school age and children out of school in countries affected and not affected by armed conflict, 2008

Source: UNESCO 2011, pages 132, 308, 309; author's calculations.

Reference

• UNESCO. 2011. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011: The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education. Paris: UNESCO. (Download in PDF format, 6.4 MB)

External links

• EFA Global Monitoring Report website
• Announcement of the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011 on the World Education Blog by the EFA GMR team
• Announcement of the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011 on the website of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009
• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008
• Global Education Digest 2010

Friedrich Huebler, 6 March 2011 (edited 26 March 2011), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2011/03/gmr.html