Shortly after this landmark conference in 1995, the international community pledged to eliminate gender disparities at all levels of education by 2015 as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As the official source of data to monitor advancement towards these goals, the UIS has released the Digest on the eve of the UN Millennium Summit (New York, 20-22 September) to present the latest available data to analyse national progress and pitfalls in reaching the MDG education targets.

According to the Digest, boys and girls in only 85 countries will have equal access to primary and secondary education by 2015, if present trends continue. Seventy-two countries are not likely to reach the goal – among which, 63 are far from reaching parity at the secondary level.

The Digest presents a rich set of cross-nationally comparable data compiled by the UIS as well as statistical information from household surveys and assessments of learning achievement that capture the scope of gender disparities at all levels of education around the world.