Showing posts with label publication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publication. Show all posts

31 July 2017

More children are out of school in poor countries

The rate and number of out-of-school children are strongly correlated with national income: in poorer countries, more children are out of school than in wealthier countries.

The World Bank classifies all countries according to their gross national income (GNI) per capita (World Bank, 2017). The map in Figure 1 shows the distribution of countries by income level according to the July 2016 classification. Low-income countries with the lowest per-capita income are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.

Figure 1

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Figure 2 shows that the out-of-school rate decreases with increasing national income. Low-income countries have, on average, the highest out-of-school rates, according to estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 19% of all children of primary school age (about 6 to 11 years) are out of school in low-income countries, compared to only 3% in high-income countries. Among adolescents of lower secondary school age (about 12 to 14 years), more than one third (38%) are out of school in low-income countries. The average out-of-school rate is highest for youth of upper secondary school age (about 15 to 17 years) living in low-income countries: nearly two thirds (62%) are not in school.

Figure 2

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

The correlation between national income and exclusion from education can also be demonstrated with national data. Figure 3 plots GNI per capita against the primary out-of-school rate. The highest out-of-school rates are observed among countries with the lowest per-capita income. South Sudan, one of the poorest countries, has the world's highest primary out-of-school rate, with 69%. The absolute number of out-of-school children, indicated by the size of the markers in Figure 3, also tends to be higher in countries with lower national income. The three countries with the largest number of out-of-school children – India, Nigeria and Pakistan – are in the lower-middle-income group of countries. The United States of America stands out as a high-income country with a relatively high rate and number of out-of-school children, but analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that the majority of these children are being homeschooled (Redford et al., 2017).

Figure 3

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics

A recent policy paper by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report (UIS and GEMR, 2017) examines the link between education and poverty. The paper concludes that reaching the Sustainable Development Goal of universal primary and secondary education could reduce the global poverty headcount (measured by the number of persons living on less than $1.90 per day) by more than 420 million, or more than half of the current number.

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25 April 2015

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).

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31 January 2015

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).

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23 February 2014

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)

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28 December 2013

Mean years of schooling

Mean years of schooling (MYS), the average number of completed years of education of a population, is a widely used measure of a country's stock of human capital. Since 2010, MYS is used as one of two education indicators (the second education indicator is the school life expectancy) in the calculation of the Human Development Index (HDI) (UNDP, 2010).

A well-known data set with estimates of MYS was developed by Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, two pioneers in this field of work. In 1993, Barro and Lee published an article describing their data set, which was partly derived from data on educational attainment by the Division of Statistics of UNESCO. Barro and Lee continue to update their data set, which is available at their website.

In December 2013, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), the successor of the Division of Statistics of UNESCO, published its first estimates of MYS of the population aged 25 years and older. This indicator, used in the calculation of the HDI, had previously not been available in the database of the UIS. The UIS methodology is based on the approach by Barro and Lee. There are still important gaps in the UIS database but the UIS will attempt to fill them in the coming years.

The figure below summarizes the MYS estimates released by the UIS in December 2013. The UIS provides data for 103 countries and territories from the period 1996 to 2013. In the figure, only the latest available data are shown for each country. All countries are grouped by geographic region and sorted by MYS of the total population. As noted above, there are large gaps in the UIS database. For example, MYS estimates are only available for 13 of the 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. For two thirds of all countries, the MYS estimates are from 2007 or a later year but for the remaining countries, the most recent estimates are more than 6 years old. In spite of these gaps, some interesting patterns can be observed in the data.

MYS is highest (generally 8 years or more) in North America and Western Europe, Central Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Among the countries with data, the highest MYS was calculated for the United Kingdom in 2011: 13.8 years. By contrast, MYS values are lowest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In Burkina Faso, men and women 25 years and older completed on average less than one year of schooling.

Gender disparities, indicated by the difference between male and female MYS, are smallest in North America and Western Europe and in Central Asia, and largest in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and West Asia. In Pakistan, adult men had on average completed 3 more years of schooling than adult women in 2011 (6.2 years for men versus 3.1 years for women). In East Asia and the Pacific and in sub-Saharan Africa, the spread between the countries with the lowest and highest MYS is more than 10 years. In the Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North America and Western Europe, the difference between the countries with the lowest and highest MYS is 6 years or less.

Mean years of schooling of the population 25 years and older, latest year available (click image to enlarge)

Note: Countries in each region sorted by MYS of total population.
Source: UIS Data Centre, December 2013, http://stats.uis.unesco.org.

The full data set with UIS estimates of MYS is available in the UIS Data Centre. The data set lists MYS values for the total, male and female population 25 years and older of 103 countries and territories, as well as the educational attainment data on which the MYS estimates are based.

  • Go to the UIS Data Centre at http://stats.uis.unesco.org.
  • Click on "Predefined Tables".
  • Click on "Literacy and Educational Attainment".
  • Click on "Mean years of schooling of population aged 25 years and older" to download an Excel file with all data.

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27 October 2013

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.

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28 October 2012

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)

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31 March 2012

World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education

Cover of the UNESCO gender atlas

UNESCO and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) have published a new World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education that illustrates the participation of girls and boys in pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The data show that there has been significant progress towards gender parity since the 1970s. Two thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary education but at the secondary level of education girls are still lagging behind. In some countries, girls have the advantage with regard to access to and completion of education. At the tertiary level, female students outnumber male students in many high-income countries.

The atlas is divided into eight chapters that contain a total of 28 maps and close to 100 charts and tables:

  1. Increased worldwide demand for quality schooling
  2. Girls’ right to education
  3. Enrolment and gender trends: primary education
  4. Enrolment and gender trends: secondary education
  5. Enrolment and gender trends: tertiary education
  6. Trends in school-life expectancy
  7. Gender trends: adult and youth literacy
  8. How policies affect gender equality in education

An excerpt from Chapter 7 on literacy is shown below. The map (please click the image for a larger view) visualizes adult literacy rates from the database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Among countries with data, literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The highest adult literacy rates are observed in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. For many developed countries, the adult literacy rate is unknown because these countries have achieved universal primary education and no longer report data on the traditional literate-illiterate dichotomy, focusing instead on the more narrowly defined concept of functional literacy.

The atlas is available in English, French and Spanish. In addition, UNESCO and UIS plan to launch an online e-atlas with interactive maps.

Excerpt from World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education: Map with adult literacy rates
World map with adult literacy rates
Source: UNESCO, 2012, World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education, pages 92-93. - Click image to enlarge.

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30 October 2011

Global Education Digest 2011

Cover of the Global Education Digest 2010

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) announced the publication of the Global Education Digest 2011. The focus of this year's edition of the GED is on secondary education.

Growing enrolment in primary education over past decades - partly due to the emphasis on universal primary education by the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All - has led to increased demand for secondary education. The Global Education Digest 2011 describes trends in participation in and completion of lower and upper secondary education from 1970 to the present, as well as disparities in access to education of children of secondary school age. The GED also contains analysis of data on educational attainment, technical and vocational education and training, secondary school teachers, and education finance.

The analytical chapter is accompanied by 200 pages of statistical tables on pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education. The GED 2011 introduces several new tables that did not appear in previous editions. Table 5 lists national, regional and global estimates of the number and percent of children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school. Table 19 introduces a new indicator of educational attainment, the percentage of the population 25 years and older with at least completed primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, post-secondary, or tertiary education. All data from the statistical annex will also be available in the UIS Data Centre.

Reference

  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2011. Global education digest 2011: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 7.5 MB)

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30 September 2011

Adult and youth literacy in 2009

8 September was International Literacy Day. On this occasion, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) released a fact sheet with estimates of adult and youth literacy in 2009, the most recent year with data.

The global adult literacy rate, for the population 15 years and older, was 83.7% in 2009, compared to 83.4% in 2008. The adult illiterate population fell from 796.2 million in 2008 to 793.1 million in 2009. 64.1% of the adult illiterate population were women. Adult literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan African and in South and West Asia (see Figure 1). In 11 countries, less than half of the adult population were able to read and write: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Figure 1: Adult literacy rate, 2009
World map with adult literacy rates in 2009
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2011

Youth literacy rates - for the population 15 to 24 years - are generally higher than adult literacy rates, due to increased school attendance rates among younger generations. The global youth literacy rate was 89.3% in 2009, compared to 89.0% in 2008. The youth illiterate population fell from 130.6 million in 2008 to 127.3 million in 2009. Youth literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 2) and the five countries worldwide with youth literacy rates below 50% are from this region: Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali and Niger.

Figure 2: Youth literacy rate, 2009
World map with youth literacy rates in 2009
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2011

Reference

  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2011. Adult and youth literacy. UIS fact sheet no. 16, September. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 350 KB)

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31 May 2011

Education finance in sub-Saharan Africa

Cover of the UIS education finance reportA new report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Financing education in sub-Saharan Africa, presents comprehensive data for the past decade for 45 African countries.

The number of children enrolled in primary school in sub-Saharan Africa grew from 87 million in 2000 to 129 million in 2008, an increase of 48 percent. Over the 1999-2009 decade, real public expenditure on education, adjusted for inflation, grew on average by 6.1 percent per year, based on data from 26 countries. The highest annual growth rates of education spending in sub-Saharan Africa, over 12 percent, were observed in Mozambique and Burundi. Of the countries with data, only the Central African Republic experienced a decline in public expenditure on education.

The countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined spend 5.0 percent of their GDP on education, the second highest value of the eight EFA regions, after North America and Western Europe, where 5.3 percent of the regional GDP is spent on the education sector.

The figure below shows data on education expenditure in 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The horizontal axis indicates a country's total public expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The vertical axis indicates a country's total public expenditure on education as a percentage of total public expenditure. Total public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP can be calculated as the product of the two values plotted along the vertical and horizontal axes.

Public education expenditure / GDP =
(Public education expenditure / Total public expenditure) × (Total public expenditure / GDP)

The three curves in the graph indicate where total public expenditure on education is equal to 2, 5 or 10 percent of GDP. Countries with higher expenditures on education as a percentage of GDP are found near the upper right corner of the graph, countries with lower expenditures near the lower left corner. For the countries in the graph, public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP ranges from 1.3 percent in the Central Africal Republic to 12.4 percent in Lesotho.

Total public expenditure on education as a percentage of total public expenditure in relation to total public expenditure as a percentage of GDP
Scatter plot with education finance data for 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
Source: UIS 2011, page 30, Figure 11

Reference
  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2011. Financing education in sub-Saharan Africa: Meeting the challenges of expansion, equity and quality. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 8.7 MB)
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06 March 2011

EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011

Cover of the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011The 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
Pie chart with data on children in conflict and non-conflict countries
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)
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31 October 2010

UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2010

Cover of the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010On 20-22 September 2010, world leaders met at the United Nations in New York on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of the Millennium Summit of 2000. One outcome of the 2000 Summit was the adoption of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  2. Achieve universal primary education
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women
  4. Reduce child mortality
  5. Improve maternal health
  6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability
  8. Develop a global partnership for development
Progress toward the MDGs is documented in the annual Millennium Development Goals Report by the United Nations. The 2010 report contains statistics and analysis for each of the eight goals. For the goal of universal primary education by 2015, "hope dims" according to the report. Although enrollment rates continue to grow worldwide, 69 million children of primary school age were still out of school in 2008, the most recent year with data. Almost three quarters of all out-of-school children lived in two regions: sub-Saharan Africa (31 million) and Southern Asia (18 million).

Reference
  • United Nations. 2010. The millennium development goals report 2010. New York: United Nations. (Download PDF, 8.5 MB)
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19 September 2010

Global Education Digest 2010

Cover of the Global Education Digest 2010On 17 September, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) announced the publication of the Global Education Digest 2010. This year's edition of the GED focuses on gender and education.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) call for the elimination of gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015 but according to the GED, only 85 of 157 countries with data will have reached gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2015, if current trends continue. 23 countries are unlikely to reach the goal at the primary level and 63 countries are unlikely to do so at the secondary level.

Gender disparities in access to education are greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Arab States. In these regions, fewer girls than boys are enrolled in primary, secondary and tertiary education. The opposite - gender disparity in favor of girls - can be observed in tertiary education in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America and Western Europe.

Other topics discussed in the Global Education Digest 2010 include: the differences between boys and girls in terms of progression through and completion of primary and secondary education; the interaction between gender, socio-economic status, geographic location, ethnicity and other factors as determinants of participation in education; differences in learning achievement of boys and girls; trends in adult literacy; women's choice of field of study at the tertiary level of education; and national education policies.

The statistical tables in the GED were updated with data up to 2008 for most indicators. All data are also available at the UIS Data Centre.

Reference
  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2010. Global education digest 2010: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 8 MB)
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28 March 2010

Children of primary and secondary school age out of school

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) publishes annual estimates of the number of children of primary school age out of school. A recent paper by Michael Bruneforth and Peter Wallet, Out-of-school adolescents (UIS 2010), extends the analysis to children of lower secondary school age. Any child enrolled in primary, secondary or tertiary education is considered in school, regardless of the child's age. Only children that are truly excluded from education are counted as out of school.

The paper's regional and global estimates of the number and percent of children out of school are reproduced in this article. Table 1 lists the population of primary and lower secondary school age in 2007. Worldwide there were about 653 million children of primary school age and 388 million children of lower secondary school age. More than half of these children lived in South and West Asia and East Asia and the Pacific.

Table 1: Population of primary and lower secondary school age by region (million), 2007
Region Primary Lower secondary Total
Sub-Saharan Africa 124.9 57.9 182.7
Arab States 41.4 21.9 63.5
South and West Asia 176.8 106.8 284.2
Central Asia 5.6 8.0 13.8
East Asia and the Pacific 173.8 106.5 281.2
Central and Eastern Europe 22.2 20.3 42.1
North America and Western Europe 50.8 31.0 81.6
Latin America and the Caribbean 58.6 35.9 93.7
World 652.6 388.2 1042.5
Source: UIS 2010, page 10, Table 1; author's calculations. - Note: Figures may not sum due to rounding.

Figure 1 illustrates the regional distribution of the population of primary and lower secondary school age. The number of children in these age groups is plotted along the horizontal axis. The vertical axis indicates the share of children of primary and lower secondary school age in each region. The regions with the largest number of school-age children in 2007 were South and West Asia (284 million), East Asia and the Pacific (281 million), and Sub-Saharan Africa (183 million). More than 60 percent of the combined population of primary and lower secondary school age were of primary school age. Central Asia and Central and Eastern Europe were exceptions, with a greater share of children of lower secondary school age than in other regions. The large share of primary-age children in Sub-Saharan Africa is a symptom of its high population growth rate.

Figure 1: Population of primary and lower secondary school age by region, 2007
Spine plot showing the distribution of the population of primary and lower secondary school age by region in 2007
Source: UIS 2010, page 10, Table 1; author's calculations. - CEE: Central and Eastern Europe, NAWE: North America and Western Europe, LAC: Latin America and the Caribbean.

The share and number of children out of school are listed in Table 2. At the global level, 11 percent or 72 million of all children of primary school age and 18 percent or 71 million of all children of lower secondary school age were out of school. The combined global share of children out of school was 14 percent. Out-of-school rates were highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 26 percent of all primary school-age children and 37 percent of all secondary school-age children were excluded from education.

Table 2: Children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school by region, 2007
Region Primary Lower secondary Total
Percent Million Percent Million Percent Million
Sub-Saharan Africa 25.8 32.2 36.8 21.3 29.3 53.5
Arab States 13.9 5.8 19.5 4.3 15.8 10.0
South and West Asia 10.2 18.0 27.3 29.1 16.6 47.2
Central Asia 4.8 0.3 4.9 0.4 4.8 0.7
East Asia and the Pacific 5.2 9.0 10.0 10.6 7.0 19.7
Central and Eastern Europe 7.0 1.6 9.6 1.9 8.3 3.5
North America and Western Europe 3.8 1.9 4.3 1.3 4.0 3.3
Latin America and the Caribbean 5.1 3.0 5.5 2.0 5.3 5.0
World 11.0 71.8 18.3 71.0 13.7 142.8
Source: UIS 2010, page 10, Table 1.

As illustrated in Figure 2, out-of-school rates are always higher at the secondary level of education than at the primary level. This is not surprising because not all students complete primary education and not all of those who graduate from primary school transfer to secondary school to continue their education. In addition to Sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia (27 percent) and the Arab States (20 percent) also had a high share of children of secondary school age out of school.

Figure 2: Children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school by region, 2007
Bar chart showing the share of children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school by region in 2007
Source: UIS 2010, page 10, Table 1.

The distribution of children out of school by region in 2007 is shown in Figure 3. A comparison with the population distribution in Figure 1 makes clear that children from Sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia were disproportionately more likely to be out of school than children from other regions. More than two thirds of the 143 million out-of-school children of primary and lower secondary age were from Sub-Saharan Africa (54 million) and South and West Asia (47 million). 20 million children out of school lived in East Asia and 10 million in the Arab States. The remaining 13 million children out of school were from Latin America and the Caribbean (5 million), Central and Eastern Europe (3.5 million), North America and Western Europe (3.3 million), and Central Asia (0.7 million).

Figure 3: Children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school by region, 2007
Spine plot showing the distribution of children of primary and lower secondary school age out of school by region in 2007
Source: UIS 2010, page 10, Table 1. - CEE: Central and Eastern Europe, NAWE: North America and Western Europe, LAC: Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab States, North America and Western Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean most children out of school were of primary age. In South and West Asia, East Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe most children out of school were of lower secondary age. At the global level, the number of out-of-school children of primary school age and lower secondary school age was roughly equal (see Table 2).

References
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