Globally, around 5.5 million more girls than boys of primary school age were out of school in 2018
What’s the Goal Here?
Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.
Why does education matter?
Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty.
Education helps reduce inequalities and reach gender equality and is crucial to fostering tolerance and more peaceful societies.
Over the past decade, major progress has been made toward increasing access to education and school enrollment rates
at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, about 258 million children and youth were still out of school in 2018 — nearly one-fifth of the global population in that age group.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 percent of students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school.
How much progress have we made so far?
The primary school completion rate reached 84 percent in 2018, up from 70 percent in 2000, and under current trends, is expected to reach 89 percent globally by 2030.
In 74 countries with comparable data for
In the period 2011-2019, around seven in ten children aged three and four were developmentally on track in at least three of the following domains: literacy-numeracy, physical development, social-emotional development, and learning.
The global adult literacy rate (aged 15 years and older) was 86 percent in 2018, while the youth literacy rate (15 to 24 years) was 92 percent.
Despite years of steady growth in enrolment rates, non-proficiency rates remain
disturbingly high.
In 2018, some 773 million adults—two-thirds of whom are women—remained
illiterate in terms of reading and writing skills. And the sheer magnitude of school
closures due to COVID-19 is likely to set back progress on access to education.
Certain critical issues recur from year to year, and the most pressing of those are summarized here, along with
potential solutions to work around them when available. It’s easy to point to obvious problems and make ambitious,
far-reaching (and often expensive) suggestions that don’t have much hope of implementation.
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE ONE: MINDFULNESS
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE TWO: SINGULARITY
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE THREE: TERRORISM
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE FOUR: SUSTAINABILITY
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE FIVE: POST-TRUTH POLITICS
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE SIX: KNOWLEDGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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EDUCATION CHALLENGE SEVEN: CHARACTER
However, we’d rather focus on the most pervasive issues that we actually have the power to change in small ways, creating a better learning environment for students.
What challenges remain?
Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?
Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources.
The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers, and the Internet.
Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed.
Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?
Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About one-third of countries in the developing regions have not achieved gender parity in primary education.
These disadvantages in education also translate into a lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labor market for young women
What can we do?
Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.
