Under this heading you will discover a wide variety of statistical data, tools and resources.
Statistical Tables
Statistical Tables appearing in the Global Education Monitoring Reports:
WIDE - World Inequality Database on Education
The World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) highlights the powerful influence of circumstances, such as wealth, gender, ethnicity and location, over which people have little control but which play an important role in shaping their opportunities for education and wider life chances. It draws attention to unacceptable levels of education inequality across countries and between groups within countries, with the aim of helping to inform policy design and public debate.
Major statistics repositories
Links to institutions and data bases that are major repositories of authoritative statistics.
Learning Assessment Statistics
Seeking Quality in Education: The Growth of National Learning Assessments, 1990-2013: A study that examines key trends and characteristics of national learning assessments.
Background papers & country profiles
To learn more about particular countries, regions or topics, you may also wish to consult the Background papers
Countries with incomplete or missing data
The Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM) makes extensive use of comparable country-level data, collected and quality-assured by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), to monitor and show countries’ progress towards education for all (EFA) goals. However, data availability remains an important issue since a number of countries have insufficient or unreliable data for international comparisons. The lack of sufficient and reliable data continues to impede comprehensive monitoring and has prevent a full assessment of countries’ progress towards the EFA goals countries since 1999. Read more
Click on a country name to find out more information about it: Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Kiribati, Libya, Macao; China, Maldives, Federated States of Micronesia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Zimbabwe
About education statistics
The most recent data on pupils, students, teachers and education expenditure presented in these statistical tables are for the school and financial years ending in 2014. They are based on survey results reported to and processed by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) before the end of March 2016. Data received and processed after that date are published on the UIS website and will be used in the next Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report. A small number of countries submitted data for the school year ending in 2014, presented in bold in the statistical tables.
These statistics refer to all formal schools, both public and private, by level of education. In addition to the administrative data provided to the UIS by ministries of education worldwide, the statistical tables rely on and present data from a variety of others sources, including national, regional and international learning assessments; national and international household surveys, such as demographic and health surveys (DHS) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)-Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS); and bodies including the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UNICEF, the United Nations Population Division (UNPD), the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The statistical tables list a total of 209 countries and territories, all of which are UNESCO member states or associated members. Most of them report their data to the UIS using standard questionnaires issued by the Institute itself. For some countries, however, education data are collected by UIS via surveys carried out jointly by the UIS, OECD and the Statistical Office of the European Union through the UIS/OECD/Eurostat (UOE) questionnaires.
Education data reported to the UIS are in conformity with the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), revised in 2011. ISCED is used to harmonize data and introduce more international comparability across national education systems. Countries may have their own definitions of education levels that do not correspond to ISCED 2011. Differences between nationally and internationally reported education statistics may be due to the use of these nationally defined education levels rather than the ISCED standard, in addition to the population issue.