67 million children of primary school age are out of school

Since the launch of the Education for All initiative and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, remarkable progress has been made in education worldwide. Much of it has been in some of the world’s poorest countries. From 1999 to 2008, an additional 52 million children enrolled in primary school. But globally, poverty still kept 67 million children of primary school age out of school in 2009. Enrolment rates are slowing in countries affected by armed conflict, and gender disparities still hamper progress for girls, especially in post-primary education. About 68 per cent of secondary-school-age children were enrolled in 2009, which was a 9 percentage point improvement over 1999. Some 16 per cent of the world’s adults — 793 million, of whom two thirds are women — still lack basic literacy skills. Globally, literacy rates are improving, but progress is slow.