Child education statistics show a problem with two connected parts: getting children into school and ensuring that they learn. In 2023, 272 million children and youth were out of school globally. At the same time, measures of foundational reading, numeracy and later achievement reveal substantial differences by wealth, geography, gender, emergency status and participation in child labour.
Contents
- Global access to education
- Who remains out of school
- Learning foundations and inequality
- Child labour and missed schooling
- United States enrollment and participation
- Completion and achievement in the United States
- International learning comparisons
Global access to education
UNESCO’s SDG 4 Scorecard 2025 estimated that 272 million children and youth were out of school in 2023. The estimate was 21 million higher than the previous estimate, a change that should be kept in mind when comparing editions of the figures.
The global total includes 79 million children of primary school age, 64 million of lower secondary school age and 130 million of upper secondary school age. The age distribution matters: exclusion is largest at upper secondary level, when continued participation depends on household resources, safety, work demands and the availability of suitable schools.
Regional figures from UNESCO’s SDG 4 Benchmarks show the scale of the challenge in two regions. Africa had 118 million children, adolescents and youth out of school, while Latin America and the Caribbean had 9.5 million. These totals use the regional groupings reported by UNESCO and combine children, adolescents and youth rather than one single school-age band.
National SDG 4 benchmarks indicated that 84 million children were at risk of still being out of school by 2030, according to UNESCO’s Monitoring SDG 4: Access to education. Countries had collectively committed to reduce the out-of-school population by 165 million by 2030, as reported in the 2025 SDG 4 Scorecard.
The concentration of exclusion is especially pronounced in upper secondary education. More than three-quarters of the global upper-secondary out-of-school population was concentrated in Central and Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Central and Southern Asia accounted for 46%, and sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 28%, according to UNESCO’s Out-of-school rate data.
Who remains out of school
Entry into primary school is widespread but does not guarantee a complete education pathway. UNICEF’s Education Pathway Analysis found that 92% of children globally had ever entered primary school. More than 40% of those children did not make it to upper secondary school.
The pathway is shorter for children in countries affected by emergencies. Only 28% of children from emergency countries completed lower secondary by the expected age, compared with 69% of children from non-emergency countries. These are pathway measures, so they describe completion by the expected age rather than eventual completion at any age.
Household wealth is also associated with the timing of progression. UNICEF reported that 74% of children from the richest families transitioned to upper secondary at the appropriate age, compared with 32% of children from the poorest families. The difference is 42 percentage points, but the figures do not identify a single cause for that gap.
Gender differences can be stark in country-level pathways. In Afghanistan, half of girls never entered primary school. Among those measured for transition, 22% of girls transitioned to upper secondary at the appropriate age, compared with 39% of boys, according to UNICEF’s Education Pathway Analysis.
| Education pathway measure | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Children globally who ever entered primary school | 92% |
| Emergency-country children completing lower secondary by expected age | 28% |
| Non-emergency-country children completing lower secondary by expected age | 69% |
| Richest-family children transitioning to upper secondary on time | 74% |
| Poorest-family children transitioning to upper secondary on time | 32% |
| Afghanistan girls transitioning to upper secondary on time | 22% |
| Afghanistan boys transitioning to upper secondary on time | 39% |
Learning foundations and inequality
School attendance and learning are different measures. UNICEF’s foundational learning report found that, in half of the countries analyzed, only 30% of children attending Grade 3 had foundational reading skills. Only 18% had foundational numeracy skills. In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 10 children had foundational learning skills on time.
The distribution of learning is unequal even among children who attend school. A child in the lowest wealth quintile was 16 percentage points less likely to have foundational reading skills than a child in the highest wealth quintile. The corresponding wealth gap for foundational numeracy was 9 percentage points.
The relationship between being out of school and learning outcomes is particularly severe in several reported country examples. In the Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sierra Leone, children who were out of school had no foundational reading skills in the cited UNICEF report. In Chad, half of all children aged 8 to 14 were out of school.
These findings should not be read as a universal result for every child in each country. They are country-specific findings reported by UNICEF, and the relevant population and assessment definitions differ across the examples.
Child labour and missed schooling
Child labour is closely connected with school exclusion and difficulty balancing school with work. The ILO/UNICEF Child Labour report found that more than one third of all children in child labour were excluded from school. Nearly 28% of children aged 5 to 11 in child labour were out of school, as were 35% of children aged 12 to 14 in child labour.
For every child in child labour excluded from school at compulsory age, another two struggled to balance work and school, according to the same report. UNICEF’s Global Child Labour Estimates 2024 found that nearly one third of children of compulsory schooling age in child labour were missing from class in 2024, compared with 8% of children of the same broad schooling age who were not in child labour.
Hazardous work is associated with even higher exclusion. Nearly half of children in hazardous work were out of school. In Asia and the Pacific, 42% of children in child labour were out of school, rising to 61% among children in hazardous work.
The gap widens during adolescence. Nearly 60% of adolescents aged 15 to 17 in child labour globally were not in school, compared with 14% of peers not in child labour. In Asia and the Pacific, 71% of adolescents in child labour were not in school. Across data from 34 countries, children in child labour were over 30% less likely to demonstrate basic reading and numeracy skills than peers not engaged in child labour.
The UNICEF child labour and learning blog also reported changes during the pandemic period. In South Africa, the number of out-of-school children tripled from 250,000 in March 2020 to 750,000 in July 2021. In Malawi, the dropout rate among girls in secondary education increased by 48% from 2020 to 2021.
United States enrollment and participation
U.S. data provide a detailed example of participation at different stages. The NCES Condition of Education 2024 reported that 59% of 3- to 5-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in school in 2022. Of all children in that age group, 39% were enrolled in public schools and 20% were receiving a private education, including homeschooling.
Enrollment was higher among 5-year-olds than among 3- to 4-year-olds: 84% versus 47% in 2022. Enrollment for 3- to 5-year-olds was 53% in 2021 and rebounded to 59% in 2022, but remained below the 61% recorded in 2019. For 3- to 4-year-olds, enrollment rose from 48% in 2012 to 49% in 2019, fell to 40% in 2021 and increased to 49% in 2022. For 5-year-olds, enrollment was 86% in both 2012 and 2019, fell to 79% in 2021 and increased to 84% in 2022.
Public preK–12 enrollment reached 49.6 million students in fall 2022, 0.4% higher than the year before. It remained 2% below the fall 2019 level of 50.8 million students. Public charter schools enrolled 8% of public school students in fall 2022, up from 5% in fall 2012; charter enrollment rose from 2.3 million to 3.7 million students over that period.
The composition of public school enrollment also changed. English learners increased from 9.4% of public school students in fall 2011 to 10.6% in fall 2021, while their number rose from 4.6 million to 5.3 million. Students ages 3 to 21 served under IDEA increased from 6.4 million in 2012–13 to 7.5 million in 2022–23, rising from 13% to 15% of public school enrollment.
Completion and achievement in the United States
Participation measures do not fully describe educational outcomes. In the United States, the public high school adjusted cohort graduation rate rose from 80% in 2011–12 to 87% in 2021–22. The status dropout rate fell from 7.0% in 2012 to 5.3% in 2022, according to the NCES Condition of Education 2024.
National assessment results show a different pattern for 13-year-olds. NAEP long-term-trend scores fell 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics from 2019–20 to 2022–23. Compared with 2011–12, scores fell 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics.
The OECD’s PISA 2022 United States note reported that 66% of U.S. students reached at least Level 2 in mathematics and 80% reached at least Level 2 in reading. Seven percent were top performers in mathematics at Level 5 or 6. These PISA measures concern the assessment population and proficiency levels used by OECD, not all children of school age.
International learning comparisons
Across OECD countries, 69% of students reached at least Level 2 in mathematics in PISA 2022. The OECD reported that 31% performed below Level 2, while 23% were at Level 2, 22% at Level 3, 15% at Level 4, 7% at Level 5 and 2% at Level 6.
For reading, 74% of students reached at least Level 2 on average across OECD countries. For science, 76% reached at least Level 2, while 24% were low performers. The science distribution included 17% at Level 1a, 6% at Level 1b and 1% below Level 1b.
The spread between education systems is substantial. In 35 education systems, more than half of students scored below Level 2 in mathematics. In 12 education systems, more than 80% scored below Level 2. At the high-performing end, the share scoring at Level 5 in mathematics was below 5% in 46 countries or economies, and 1% or less in 30.
Changes in inequality were mixed between 2018 and 2022. The socio-economic gap in mathematics performance did not change in 51 of 68 countries or economies with available data, widened in 12 and narrowed in 5. The gender gap in mathematics did not change in 57 of 72 countries or economies with comparable data, widened in 11 and narrowed in 4. These comparisons describe changes in measured gaps, not a single global direction of change.