251M children and youth still out of school, despite decades of progress

According to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2024, 110M more children and youth have entered school since the UN Sustainable Development Goal on education was adopted in 2015, with more children in school today than ever before. Completion rates are also on the rise: 40M more young people are completing secondary school today than in 2015.

However, during the same period, the out-of-school population has reduced by only 1%. As a result of this global stagnation, 251M children and youth are still not in school worldwide. Regional disparities remain stark: 33% of school-aged children and youth in low-income countries are out of school, compared to only 3% in high-income countries. More than half of all out-of-school children and adolescents in the world are in the sub-Saharan African region.

Education financing is a key bottleneck

The UNESCO–World Bank Education Finance Watch 2024, a second report published today, confirmed that one of the key obstacles in further broadening access to quality education globally remains the lack of funding: 4 in 10 countries spend less than 15% of their total public expenditure and less than 4% of GDP on education, the two agreed benchmarks. 

The education investment gap between countries is also staggering: low- and middle-income countries spent only $55 per learner in 2022, compared to $8,543 for high-income countries. The UNESCO–World Bank report also warns of the growing weight of debt servicing. In Africa, countries spent almost as much on debt servicing in 2022 as they did on education. At the same time, the share of official development assistance going to education globally has dropped from 9.3% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2022.

The magnitude of educational exclusions globally urges us to strengthen international solidarity and leverage innovative financing mechanisms, such as debt-for-education swaps. Several bilateral initiatives have paved the way in recent years, and it is now possible to scale up these efforts. In line with the longstanding work of the G20, which resulted in the first common framework for debt restructuring in 2020, UNESCO is calling on States to consider a multilateral platform dedicated to converting debt into sustainable financing for education.

Through this platform, countries that are burdened by unsustainable levels of debt could negotiate their conversion into investments for education. It could build on the expertise of key stakeholders in this field: UNESCO, the G20 and multilateral funds for education such as the Global Partnership for Education.

Synergies between UNESCO and the G20

The aforementioned reports were released at the Global Education Meeting, organized by UNESCO and hosted by the Government of Brazil in Fortaleza (31 October-1 November). This is one of the largest international education conferences and the fourth in a series of meetings convened by UNESCO since 2018 to take stock of progress towards educational goals globally. For the first time, the event is held back-to-back with the G20 Education Ministers’ Meeting, and is placed under the theme of equity and inclusion, in synergy with the priorities of the Brazilian Presidency of the G20, for which UNESCO is a privileged partner. 

The Fortaleza Declaration – the outcome document of the Global Education Meeting – to be endorsed by over 40 Ministers of Education issues a strong call to prioritize education as a key lever for more just and sustainable futures. It also calls for renewed educational approaches that address the pressing challenges of our times, through mainstreaming climate education into school curricula, promoting education for peace against the rise of hate speech and discrimination, and furthering gender equality in and through education.

For more information, click here.

Source: UNESCO