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Education data Sources
Explore global education statistics on challenges and results organized by theme, including specific data for GPE partner countries.
Child labor
- An estimated 150 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor.
Source: UNICEF data - In the world’s poorest countries, nearly one in four children are engaged in work that is potentially harmful to their health.
Source: UNICEF data - The majority of children engaged in economic activities also perform unpaid household services. Only 3.7% of children are engaged solely in economic activities.
Source: Impact of unpaid household services on the measurement of child labour. MICS methodological papers. Paper No. 2, 2013. Meltem Dayioğlu. MICS/UNICEF. p.15 - Children who work for 43 or more hours per week can hardly find time to attend school. Indeed, less than 15% of them attend school.
Source: Impact of unpaid household services on the measurement of child labour. MICS methodological papers. Paper No. 2, 2013. Meltem Dayioğlu. MICS/UNICEF. p.31
Disability
- Kids with disabilities who needs the most help are the autistic children
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/autism-learning-disabilities/helping-your-child-with-autism-thrive.htm
- Approximately one billion people in the world are living with a disability, with at least 1 in 10 being children and 80% living in developing countries.
Source: World Report on Disability - Between 93 million and 150 million children are estimated to live with disabilities.
Source: EFA GMR 2015, p.100 - In low and lower-middle income countries, around 40% of children with disabilities are out of school at primary level and 55% at lower secondary level
Source: UNICEF, Towards Inclusive Education. The impact of disability on school attendance in developing countries. 2016 - The literacy rate for adults with disabilities is 3%. For women with disabilities the literacy rate is even lower, at 1%
Source: UNGEI. Still left behind: Pathways to inclusive education for girls with disabilities, p.12
Economic development
- One extra year of schooling increases an individual's earnings by up to 10%.
Source: GEM Report, Education Counts, Toward the Millennium Development Goals, p.7 (2011)
- Each additional year of schooling raises average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.37%.
Source: GEM Report, Education Counts, Toward the Millennium Development Goals, p.6 (2011)
- A dollar invested in an additional year of schooling, particularly for girls, generates earnings and health benefits of US$10 in low-income countries and nearly US$4 in lower-middle income countries.
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary, p. 4 - The cost of 250 million children not learning the basics is equivalent to a loss of US$129 billion per year.
Source: GEM Report 2013/2014, p.19 - A dollar invested in a one-year increase in the mean years of schooling generates more than US$5 in additional gross earnings in low-income countries and US$2.5 in lower-middle income countries.
Source: The Learning Generation, p. 34
Environment
- If education progress is stalled, it could lead to a 20% increase in disaster-related fatalities per decade.
Source: GEM Report: Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all (2016), p.32
- Universalizing upper secondary education by 2030 would prevent 200,000 disaster-related deathsin the 20 years that follow.
Source: GEM Report: Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all (2016), p.33
Gender
- 132 million girls worldwide are out of school (2016). This includes 34.3 million girls of primary school age, 30 million girls of lower secondary school age, and 67.4 million girls of upper secondary school age.
Source: UIS/GEM Report Fact Sheet 48, p.5 - Girls are 1.5 times more likely than boys to be excluded from primary school. That's 15 million girls of primary school age who will never have the opportunity to learn to read and write in primary school, compared to about 10 million boys.
Source: UIS/GEM Report Policy Paper 27/Fact Sheet 37, p.5 - Each year of secondary education reduces the likelihood of marrying as a child before the age of 18 by five percentage points or more.
Source: Economic impacts of child marriage: Global synthesis report (2017), p.5
Health
- A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of five, 50% more likely to be immunized, and twice as likely to attend school.
Source: The Learning Generation, p. 99 - If all mothers completed primary education, maternal deaths would be reduced by two-thirds, saving 189,000 lives.
Source: Education transforms lives, p.7
Inequality
- In developing countries, the gap in primary school completion rates between the richest and poorest children is more than 30 percentage points.
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary, p. 10 - In low-income countries, around 46% of public education resources is allocated to educate the top 10% most educated students.
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary, p. 10 - In poor countries with available data, on average primary-school age children from the wealthiest 20% of households are four times more likely to be learning at the desired levels than children from the poorest 20% of households.
Source: The Learning Generation, p. 41 - Young people from the poorest 20% of households are almost six times as likely to be unable to read as those from the richest 20% of households
Source: GEM Report, Policy Paper 20, p. 7 - In countries with twice the levels of educational inequality, the probability of conflict more than doubles.
Source: The Learning Generation, p. 14
Learning and literacy
- In 2017, the UIS estimates that more than 617 million – or six out of ten – children and adolescents of primary and lower secondary school age do not achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet N°48, February 2018 p.12
- More than 80%of the 617 million children and adolescents who are not learning enough to meet minimum proficiency levels come from low- and lower-middle-income countries, although these countries are home to only 60% of the global school-age population.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet N°48, February 2018 p.12
- Globally, two-thirds of children – 68% or 262 million out of 387 million – are in school and will reach the last grade of primary but will not achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading. About 60% or 137 million adolescents are in school but not learning.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet 46, p.10 - 91% of primary school-age children in low-income countries will not achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading and the rate is 87% in math compared to 5% and 8% respectively in high-income countries.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet 46, p.16
- 93% of secondary school-age adolescents in low-income countries will not achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading compared to 27% in high-income countries.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet 46, p.11
- 274 million primary school children worldwide are not learning basic foundational skills necessary to lead productive and healthy lives.
Source: Calculated based on data in The Learning Generation, Education Commission, p. 33 - Low- and middle-income countries spend 2% of their Gcg each year on education costs that do not lead to learning.
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary, p. 7
Mother tongue
- Half of all children in low- and middle-income countries are not taught in a language they speak.
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary, p. 7
Out-of-school children
- In 2017, 262 million (or 1 out of every 5) children, adolescents and youth were out of school. This includes 64 million children of primary school age, 61 million adolescents of lower secondary school age, and 138 million youth of upper secondary school age.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2018 - After an initial decline in the years after 2000, the primary out-of-school rate has barely moved from around 9% since 2008 and the lower secondary out-of-school rate has been at 16% since 2012.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet N°48, February 2018 p.2 - The primary out-of-school rate is 20% in low-income countries and 3% in high-income countries. The lower secondary out-of-school rateis 38% in low-income countries and 2% in high-income countries, and the upper secondary out-of-school rate is 59% and 6% respectively.
Source: UIS Fact Sheet N°48, February 2018 p.10 - 41% (4 out of 10, or 25 million) of all out-of-school children of primary school age have never attended school and will probably never start if current trends continue. Two thirds of them are girls.
Source: UIS GEM Report, Education for people and planet, p.180 (2016)
Peace and tolerance
- Literate people are more likely to participate in the democratic process and exercise their civil rights
Source: UNESCO, 2012 - If the enrollment rate for secondary schooling is 10 percentage points higher than the average, the risk of war is reduced by about 3 percentage points
Source: World Bank 2005, p. 16 - An increase in secondary school enrollment from 30% to 81% is estimated to reduce the probability of civil war by almost two-thirds.
Source: ABC’s, 123’s, and the Golden Rule: The Pacifying Effect of Education on Civil War, 1980–1999, by Clayton L. Thyne as cited by Rebecca Winthrop, Brookings Institution, in US leadership in global education: The time is now
Poverty
- 420 million people would be lifted out of poverty with a secondary education, thus reducing the number of poor worldwide by more than half.
Source: UIS/GEM Report Policy Paper 32/Fact Sheet 44, p.11 - If adults had just 2 more years of schooling, 60 million would be lifted out of poverty.
Source: UIS/GEM Report Policy Paper 32/Fact Sheet 44, p.11
Secondary education
- In 2030 in low-income countries, under present trends, only one out of 10 young peoplewill be on track to gain basic secondary-level skills
Source: The Learning Generation, executive summary p. 3
Teachers
- By 2030, countries must recruit 69 million teachers to provide every child with primary and secondary education: 24.4 million primary school teachers and 44.4 million secondary school teachers.
Source: UIS factsheet #39, October 2016, p. 1 - Of the 24.4 million teachers needed for universal primary education, 21 million will replace teachers who leave the workforce. The remaining 3.4 million, however, are additional teachers who are needed to expand access to school and support education quality by reducing the numbers of children in each class to a maximum of 40.
Source: UIS factsheet #39, October 2016, p. 1 - In one-third of all countries, less than 75% of teachers were trained according to national standards in 2013.
Source: EFA GMR 2015, p.122 - Countries with more female primary teachers are more likely to have higher enrollment rates for girls in secondary schools. Unfortunately, in some countries, less than 25% of primary teachers are female.
Source: UNESCO eAtlas of Teachers
Technology
- Less than 10 percent of schools are connected to the Internet across many developing countries.
Source: The Learning Generation, Executive summary, p. 8