Aid to basic education has decreased for the first time since 2002 as per Unesco statistics

Updated on: Saturday, June 22, 2013

New statistics released by Unesco show that 57 million children were out of school in 2011; a drop of just two million from the year before. Compounding this problem for children around the world is a new data analysis showing that aid to basic education has decreased for the first time since 2002.

Irina Bokova, Unesco’s director-general, said, “We are at a critical juncture,” “The world must move beyond helping children enter school to also ensure that they actually learn the basics when they are there. Our twin challenge is to get every child in school by understanding and acting on the multiple causes of exclusion, and to ensure they learn with qualified teachers in healthy and safe environments. Now is not the time for aid donors to back out. Quite the reverse: to reach these children and our ambition to end the learning crisis, donors must renew their commitments so that no child is left out of school due to lack of resources, as they pledged at the turn of this century.”

The new figures released by the Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that countries in sub-Saharan Africa account for more than half of all out-ofschool children. By contrast, countries in South and West Asia have made considerable gains over the past two decades, reducing the number of out-of-school children by two-thirds from 38 million in 1999 to 12 million in 2011.

Typically, it is children in poor, remote areas, those affected by conflict, or those belonging to ethnic, racial and linguistic minorities who are denied an opportunity for schooling. Children from poor households are three times as likely to be out-ofschool than children from rich households. Girls from poor households in rural areas are facing the greatest barriers to education. Sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia have the highest rate of early school leaving. Across these regions, more than one of every three students who started primary school in 2010 will not make it to the last grade.

New interventions are required to reduce this rate in order to achieve universal primary education and ensure that every child acquires basic literacy and numeracy skills.

In 2012, UIS estimated that 61 million children of primary school were out of school in 2010. In 2013, UIS revised its estimate for 2010 to 59 million children. The difference is due to the availability of new national data.

India has 1.7 million out-ofschool children by 2010 data
Using the latest data, India has moved up a position from third bottom place in 2004-2006 for the most out-of-school children to fourth bottom place in 2011. Despite still being in fourth lowest position, India has made the largest progress

Aid to basic education has decreased for the first time since 2002 as per Unesco statistics

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