- By Supratik Das
- Sun, 15 Jun 2025 04:14 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
The global out-of-school children figure has increased sharply to 272 million, the world's newest Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report issued by UNESCO reveals. This is an increase of over 21 million from the last global assessment, marking a huge setback in efforts towards achieving universal education within the 2030 timeline.
According to the report, countries are now expected to fall short of their national education targets by at least 75 million children by the year 2025. Two important reasons for the increase in the out-of-school population were identified by the GEM Team. For one, incorporating new enrolment and attendance figures explains approximately eight million of the rise. The prohibition of girls going to secondary school in Afghanistan, introduced in 202,1 also played an important role in the increasing number of out-of-school children. Second, the 2024 UN World Population Prospects announced an increase in the school-age population greater than anticipated. The school-age population, estimated by the number of children between 6 and 17 years old, is currently estimated to be 49 million more in 2025 than it was before, adding another 13 million to be considered out of school.
The UNESCO report also broke down the global statistics, observing that around 11 per cent of children of primary school age, or 78 million, are not in school. In the lower secondary school age, between 15 per cent, or 64 million adolescents, do not go to school. The picture is even grimmer among upper secondary school age young people, where 31 per cent, or 130 million people, are still out of the schooling system. While all these statistics already reflect a dismal picture, the report underscored that the situation is possibly worse in conflict zones. UNESCO cautioned that the actual effect of war and emergencies on school enrollment is probably under-reported, as it becomes very challenging or impossible to conduct data collection in such areas. Consequently, the real number of children deprived of an education in areas of crisis is potentially a greater than implied by existing estimates. The report described how their model relies on steady patterns of student movement through schooling systems, but this becomes a fault when sudden emergencies disrupt school attendance. One of the significant challenges emphasised in the report is the disparity between national education statistics and global model projections. National data tend to rely on administrative information for a single year, whereas UNESCO's model uses administrative, survey, and census data to construct a wider image and may use projections where data is not available. This difference means that global figures are more reflective of long-term trends but may not align exactly with national reporting.
The GEM report further broke down the way nations are progressing towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) and how it seeks to provide inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030. It showed that although nations are likely to achieve their respective avowed targets, the world's out-of-school population would decrease by a mere 165 million by the end of the decade. Though, according to predictions, by 2025 the nations will already be four percentage points behind schedule for primary and lower secondary levels, as well as six percentage points behind schedule for upper secondary education targets. In actual numbers, this signifies that nations will lag behind by 75 million children just in the next two years.
UNESCO issued an appeal to take urgent action, with the threat that unless a concerted effort is made, in the form of more funding, improved data systems, and crisis protection policies for education, the world will lose a generation to educational exclusion. The report emphasizes that governments, international organisations, and communities need to collaborate more closely than ever before to reverse this trend and safeguard the right of education for every child.
With inputs from agency.