The effort to get more children into school is grinding to a halt as the numbers are stagnating, according to a new report that warns of grave consequences for world poverty.

Unesco’s figures, released this week, estimate that the global poverty rate could be more than halved if everyone completed secondary school. But the researchers said that it is unlikely this target will be met for generations as out-of-school rates remain stubbornly consistent.

Some 264 million children and young people were missing out on an education in 2015, according to Unesco, the UN educational, scientific and cultural organisation – a figure unchanged since 2012. Across the world, 9% of all primary school age children do not have access to a school place, with rates reaching 16% and 37% for those of lower and upper secondary ages, respectively.

Across all age groups, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the worst out-of-school rates. More than half of all young people between the ages of 15 and 17 are not in school, as are more than a third of adolescents between 12 and 14 years and a fifth of children between the ages of six and 11.

Of the 61 million children of primary school age currently missing out on an education across the world, 17 million (28%) will never set foot in a classroom, if current trends continue. This is the case for one in three of the children out of school in sub-Saharan Africa, western Asia and northern Africa, and more than one in four of those in central Asia and southern Asia.

The lack of progress is down to a complex set of factors, said Anna Cristina D’Addio, senior policy analyst at Unesco’s Global Education Monitoring Report. “In some cases, we are not sure exactly what is happening. For example, we don’t have recent data from Nigeria and we don’t have any data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But it is also the case that conflicts and the refugee crisis in places like South Sudan or Syria reverse any progress that might be taking place elsewhere.”

“In Africa, children, adolescents and youth face overlapping disadvantages related to their location, ethnicity, wealth and sex and the fact that policies are not addressing the handicaps they have in terms of poverty and malnutrition in their early years,” said D’Addio. Lack of infrastructure, unsafe learning environments, absence of teaching and learning materials, insufficiently prepared teachers and limited support at home all played a role, she added.

The research is released ahead of the UN high-level political forum which will be held 10-19 July and focus on the commitment to eradicate poverty by 2030.

Unesco estimates that nearly 60 million people could avoid poverty if all adults had just two more years of schooling. It adds that poverty would be ended for 420 million people if all adults completed secondary education. This would reduce the total number of poor people across the world by more than half, said the report, with the greatest benefits felt in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Unesco’s projections are based on analysis of the average effects of education on growth and poverty reduction from 1965-2010 in developing countries.



A girl breaks brick beside the road in Narayanganj, close to Dhaka in Bangladesh. In low-income countries, more than 11 million girls of primary age are not in school, compared with almost 9 million boys. Photograph: Mushfiqul Alam/NurPhoto/Getty Images

At the moment, children from the poorest 20% of families are eight times as likely to be out of school as those from the richest 20% in lower-middle-income countries. The report calls on governments to reduce costs of schooling for families, and suggests cash transfers to families, scholarships and other incentives would encourage attendance.

The paper reports that, across the board, the gender gap in education has reduced. But global averages mask disparities at country level, where girls continue to face barriers to education.

“No region has achieved gender parity,” said D’Addio. “At the lower secondary school level, there are wide disparities at the expense of girls in western Asia and northern Africa. At the upper secondary school level, there are wide disparities at the expense of boys in eastern Asia and south-eastern Asia.”

In low-income countries, more than 11 million girls of primary age are not in school, compared with almost 9 million boys.

