UNESCO Report: 272 Million Children Remain Out of School Worldwide
PARIS — UNESCO's 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, launched in March under the theme "Access and Equity: Countdown to 2030," finds that an estimated 272 million children, adolescents, and youth remain out of school globally — underscoring how far education systems still are from the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 4 target of inclusive, equitable education for all.
The report is the first in a three-part series examining SDG 4 progress: access and equity in 2026, quality and learning in 2027, and relevance in 2028-2029. It introduces a new Education Financing Equity index to measure how strongly countries' education and social-protection spending is geared toward disadvantaged learners, rather than measuring outcomes alone.
The out-of-school rate has remained broadly stable at around 17% globally since 2015, though gaps between income groups remain stark: out-of-school rates run as high as 36% in low-income countries compared with 3% in high-income countries.
