About 263 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2016. The total includes 63 million children of primary school age, 61 million of lower secondary school age and 139 million of upper secondary age.

As countries strive to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030, the UIS is providing the data and analysis needed to reach the children and youth who remain excluded from education. Through its website, publications and data visualizations, the UIS aims to strengthen the availability of detailed internationally-comparable data on out-of-school children and youth, to make it possible to better identify who they are, where they live and the barriers they face.

In addition to its regular survey operations, the UIS works directly with countries to help them produce data on out-of-school children and youth, as well as interpret and use such data for policy-making. As part of these efforts, the UIS contributes to the development of methodologies needed to produce data for monitoring the targets of the SDG 4 – Education 2030 agenda.

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A new paper from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Education and Disability, presents the first in-depth analysis of available data for 49 countries. It confirms that persons with...
28/03/2018
UIS releases data for reference year 2016 New figures on the number of children out of school worldwide reveal that, despite decades of efforts to get every child into the classroom, progress has...
28/02/2018
Six out of ten children and adolescents are unable to meet minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics, according to the UIS. A new paper presents the methodology used to produce these...
07/11/2017

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