The increase is partly due to the mass exclusion of women and girls from education in Afghanistan, but can also be attributed to a broader stagnation in education provision worldwide.
The findings undermine UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which sets the goal of quality education for all by 2030.
Far away
If countries were on track with their national SDG 4 targets, six million more children would be in kindergarten, 58 million more children and adolescents would be in school, and at least 1.7 million more primary school teachers would have been trained , the report said. the report.
“Education is in a state of emergency,” said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.
“While significant efforts have been made in recent decades to ensure quality education for all, UNESCO data shows that the number of children out of school is now rising.
“States must urgently remobilize if they do not want to sell out the future of millions of children.”
Future ‘in your hands’
A year ago, 141 countries pledged at the UN Transforming Education Summit to accelerate progress towards SDG 4.
Four out of five countries aimed to promote teacher training and professional development, seven out of ten countries pledged to increase or improve their investments in education, and one in four pledged to increase financial support and the provision of school meals .
However, for countries to achieve their SDG 4 targets, millions of additional children must be enrolled in early childhood education annually until 2030, and progress in completing primary education must almost triple.
“These commitments must now be reflected in action. There is no more time to lose. To achieve SDG 4, a new child must be enrolled in school every two seconds between now and 2030,” the Director-General said.
“The future of millions of children is in your hands,” she emphasized to member states.
Insufficient growth
The report highlights that the number of children completing primary education has increased by less than three percentage points since 2015 to 87 percent.
The number of people completing secondary education, meanwhile, has increased by less than five percent to just 58 percent.
Among the 31 low- and lower-middle-income countries that measure educational progress at the end of primary school, Vietnam is the only country where the majority of children reach minimal proficiency in both reading and mathematics.
Global framework
The Education 2030 Framework for Action calls on countries to set interim benchmarks for SDG 4 indicators. In an inclusive approach, countries were helped to set benchmarks to achieve by 2025 and 2030 for seven SDG 4 benchmarks in the areas of pre-primary education, school attendance, completion and learning, gender equality, learning proficiency, trained teachers and public spending.