No time to lose on the road to universal primary and secondary education

Despite every promise and declaration, and all the genuine efforts made to date, there are still around 262 million – or one out of every five – children, adolescents and youth between the ages of 6-17 who don’t go to school.

The latest figures on out-of-school-children are disappointing, showing progress that is – at best – painfully slow.

Despite every promise and declaration, and all the genuine efforts made to date, there are still around 262 million – or one out of every five – children, adolescents and youth between the ages of 6-17 out of school. That figure rises to a shocking one in three children out of school in the world’s poorest countries. What’s worse is that new data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that progress has stalled, with the rates and the numbers remaining more or less static for years.

This is not good enough. Every child out of the classroom represents wasted potential and lost opportunities, despite the global commitment to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) – a quality primary and secondary education for every child and adolescent – by 2030.

The world has promised to…