Education Progress and Prospects

Jan 25th, 2010 12:49 PM UTC
By Rena Pacheco-Theard

On Wednesday I attended the Washington, D.C. release of UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010, Reaching the marginalized. This annual report provides the most up-to-date information on progress in education around the world, noting this year that many of the world’s poorest countries are now experiencing the impacts of the global economic crisis, making it harder to maintain or build upon recent strides.

This report comes a decade after world leaders adopted the Education for All goals, but millions of children are still out of school. Inequalities based on poverty, gender, location, ethnicity, disability, and language all impact the educational prospects of the world’s children.

However, progress is being made. The number of out of school children has dropped significantly since 1999, even with a growing population, and gender inequalities are on the decline.

Here are some of the figures from this year’s report:

• 72 million children are out of school worldwide (down from 105 million in 1999), 32 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Nearly 42 million African children have been newly enrolled in primary school since 1999.
• Girls account for 54% of out of school children, down from 58% in 1999.
• One-third of out of school children are in states affected by conflict.
• If current trends persist, 56 million children will still be out of school in 2015.

You can read UNESCO’s press release here and the full report here.

TAGS: Education, Policy News