Education data highlights

Explore a list of useful statistics on education by theme, both globally and for GPE partner countries.

Access to education

GPE has supported 372 million children with better education during the length of the GPE 2025 strategy (2021-2025) through grants and cofinancing from partners.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
Close to 10 million more children have been enrolled in school in partner countries, half of them girls, between 2021 and 2025.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
272 million children and youth were out of school in 2023.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics Global Education Monitoring Report Team

More data on access to education

GPE grants and cofinancing from partners have helped build or renovate close to 92,000 classrooms between 2021 and 2025.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
$380 million allocated in grants to improve access to education in fiscal year 2024.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. September 2025
As of 2022, 16% of primary-school-age children, about 20% of lower-secondary-school-age adolescents and 26% of upper-secondary-school-age youth were out of school in partner countries.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p. 15
Nearly 67% of partner countries’ partnership compacts address improving access for children with disabilities, with half focusing on teaching and learning for those children.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p. 23
As of August 2023, GPE was providing $1.1 billion to strengthen education systems in 17 countries where refugees have access to school.
Source: GPE Secretariat
There are 179 million children out of school at primary and secondary levels in GPE partner countries.
Source: GPE figures based on GEM 2025 Report
There are 3.5 million more girls out of school than boys in GPE partner countries but the share of boys who are out of school is growing.
Source: GPE figures based on GEM 2025 Report
Almost three-quarters of the global out-of-school population is in Central and Southern Asia (34%) and sub-Saharan Africa (39%).
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics Global Education Monitoring Report Team
Since 2015, when Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education was set, out-of-school numbers have reduced by less than 1%.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics Global Education Monitoring Report Team

Climate change and education

If every child received a full secondary school education by 2030, 200,000 disaster–related deaths could be averted in the following two decades through improved risk awareness.
Source: UNESCO, 2016
One billion children are at extremely high risk of the impacts of climate change. That is nearly half of all children in the world.
Source: UNICEF, 2021
Climate change could displace more than 216 million people by 2050, forcing them out of their homes and communities, interrupting their schooling, causing psychosocial stress and straining education provision at their destination.
Source: World Bank, 2021

More data on climate change and education

64% of GPE grants since 2021 support climate resilience.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
GPE investments in climate-resilient schools have helped partner countries save $2.5 billion in potential damages from climate disasters.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
Students’ exposure to environment-related, curriculum-based education can reduce energy consumption by more than 15% in their homes, and 30% in their schools.
Source: World Bank 2024. Choosing our future. Education for climate action. p.12
For every additional year of schooling girls receive, their country’s resilience to climate-driven disasters improves substantially.
Source: Brookings, 2017
Climate shocks could push 130 million people into poverty by 2030.
Source: World Bank, 2025
Almost half a billion children live in areas experiencing at least twice as many extremely hot days as their grandparents.
Source: UNICEF, 2024
Looking at just damages due to tropical cyclones, the education sector experiences financial losses of US$4 billion annually.
Source: World Bank 2024. The impact of climate change on education and what to do about it
Nearly 40 million children a year have their education interrupted by disasters and subsequent disease outbreaks following extreme weather events.
Source: Theirworld, 2018
Just 2.4% of climate finance can be classified as supporting projects incorporating child-responsive activities, with education-specific projects being negligible.
Source: Falling Short: Addressing the climate finance gap for children
Studies show the detrimental negative impact of excess heat on test scores causing up to 1% drop in learning achievement with every 0.55°C increase in temperature.
Source: Goodman et al, 2018
Nearly 60% of high disaster-risk countries include risk reduction or disaster response components in their education sector plan, but the details are limited.
Source: Paci-Green, 2020
1.3 billion school-age children around the world are currently experiencing at least one extreme climate event per year, and 90% of these children live in low- and middle-income countries.
Source: The need for climate-smart education financing. A review of the evidence and new costing framework, Save the Children and GPE. 2023. p.24
There is a lack of meaningful integration of climate considerations in education plans. According to a 2021 UNESCO study of 46 countries, 92% of education sector plans and national curriculum frameworks included at least one reference to environment-related keywords (for example, environmental, ecosystem, biodiversity, the climate crisis, sustainable development) but the depth of inclusion was very low on average.
Source: The need for climate-smart education financing. A review of the evidence and new costing framework, Save the Children and GPE. 2023. p.24
Even though countries are mainstreaming climate change in the curricula, only 39% have a national law, policy or strategy focused on climate change education. Further, only 63% of teacher training plans include a focus on climate change.
Source: The need for climate-smart education financing. A review of the evidence and new costing framework, Save the Children and GPE. 2023. p.24

Domestic financing

60% of partner countries maintained their education budget at or above 20% of total spending or increased it (2023).
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
In 2021, leaders from 21 GPE partner countries issued a declaration on domestic education financing committing $200 billion over 5 years to ensure all children have access to quality education.
Source: GPE results at a glance. June 2024. p. 2
In FY23, GPE grants supporting domestic financing mobilization for education total $232 million.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. April 2024. p. 4
At the GPE 2021 Financing Summit, 25 more countries submitted individual commitments to prioritize and protect the volume of education financing and improve its efficiency and fairness.
Source: GPE Secretariat

Early childhood education

Worldwide, 175 million pre-primary age children are not enrolled in pre-primary education.
Source: UNICEF, 2019
Despite rapid progress in the past two decades, the pre-primary gross enrollment ratio stood at 61.5% worldwide in 2019.
Source: Right from the start: build inclusive societies through inclusive early childhood education. GEMR Policy paper 46. July 2021. P.2
46% of children were enrolled in pre-primary education in GPE partner countries in 2023 compared to 19% in 2002.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p.7
GPE grants supporting early childhood education totaled $324 million in fiscal year 2025.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. September 2025

More data on early childhood education

About 85% of grants supporting early learning included support for pre-primary teachers in 2022.
Source: GPE Secretariat
In 2020, 3 out of 4 children globally were enrolled in organized learning one year before the official primary entry age, with progress stagnating since 2015.
Source: The sustainable development goals report 2023. p. 21
As of 2020, only half of the 187 countries and areas with data provided free pre-primary education, and almost three quarters of the 215 countries and areas with data did not make pre-primary education compulsory.
Source: The sustainable development goals report 2023. p.21
In sub-Saharan Africa, the average annual participation rate in early childhood education in 2020–2025 must grow four times faster, from 0.7 to 2.8 percentage points per year, if the countries in the region are to reach their 2025 national targets – or even faster if COVID-19 is found to have had a long-term impact.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p.4
Among the 20 countries with the world’s lowest preschool participation rates,  14 are in Africa.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p.127
Just 20% of children are enrolled in pre-primary education in low-income countries.
Source: Global education monitoring report, 2021/2: non-state actors in education: who chooses? who loses? UNESCO 2021, p. 251
Only 63 (over 193) countries have adopted legal provisions for free pre-primary education, and 51 countries have adopted pre-primary education as a compulsory level in national legal frameworks.
Source: UNESCO, 2021
Only 1% of aid to education is invested in pre-primary education.
Source: TheirWorld 2021, p.15

Economic growth

If governments were to increase efforts so that every child was in school, the future world GDP would rise by more than US$6.5 trillion annually.
Source: The price of inaction: the global private, fiscal and social costs of children and youth not learning. UNESCO, 2025.
Out-of-school children and educational gaps cost the global economy $10,000 billion a year.
Source: The price of inaction: the global private, fiscal and social costs of children and youth not learning. UNESCO, 2025.
Education accounts for 50% of global economic growth, 70% of income gains among the world’s poorest quintile, and 40% of extreme poverty reduction since 1980.
Source: Gethin, 2024

More data on education and economic growth

Each additional year of schooling that a person completes yields 10% more income on average, which is higher than the average annual returns on the US stock market.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 22
A change of 1% in learning is associated with a change of 7.2% in annual growth.
Source: Education finance watch 2023. p. 4
Education builds skills and fosters creativity, and educated people tend to innovate more and create new businesses and technologies, which in turn boost private sector development and generate more employment.
Source: Investments in education: What are the productivity gains?
Global youth employment declined by 34 million from 2019 to 2020, and young men are also 1.5 times more likely than young women to be employed.
Source: Global Employment Trends for Youth 2022: Investing in transforming futures for young people. Geneva: ILO, 2022. p.15
1 in 5 young people worldwide does not have experience in the labor market, does not receive income from work and is not enhancing their education and skills.
Source: Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024. Decent work, brighter futures, Geneva: International Labour Office, 2024.

Education in crisis situations

Globally 234 million crisis-affected children and adolescents require urgent support to access quality education, an increase of 35 million girls and boys over the past three years.
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.1
Nearly 1 in 5 children globally (19%) live in conflict zones as the world experiences the highest number of conflicts since World War II. This amounts to over 473 million children.
Source: UNICEF, 2024
GPE grants and cofinancing supported 1.76 million children who are internally displaced or refugees.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
Since 2013, 68 GPE partner countries have accessed a total of US$857 million to mitigate the impact of crises on children’s education, including natural disasters, armed conflict, forced displacement, and health emergencies.
Source: GPE Secretariat

More data on education in crisis situations

68% of children completed primary school in partner countries affected by fragility and conflict and 53% of children completed lower secondary school in these countries in 2022.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p.63
GPE provided $277 million in accelerated funding in partner countries affected by crisis for temporary shelters, classroom construction, teacher salaries, school meals, supplies and grants.
Source: GPE Secretariat
106 million more children enrolled in school in partner countries affected by fragility and conflict since 2002.
Source: GPE Secretariat
70% of children reached through GPE grants are in countries affected by conflict and fragility.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
52% of GPE funding have been spent in partner countries affected by fragility and conflict.
Source: GPE Results Report 2022, p.136
As of August 2023, GPE has invested $1.1 billion to strengthen education systems in 17 countries where refugees have access to school.
Source: GPE Secretariat
$435 million in cofinancing was unlocked for partner countries affected by fragility and conflict through the GPE Multiplier and GPE Match in 2022.
Source: GPE results at a glance. June 2024. p.2
34 GPE partner countries are affected by fragility or conflict in fiscal year 2023.
Source: List of GPE partner countries affected by fragility and conflict
GPE partner countries are home to almost 4 million refugee children, about 45% of the world’s refugee children population.
Source: UNHCR and GPE data as of 2016. UNHCR data only accounts for refugees for whom demographic data is available.
Since 2016, the number of out-of-school children of primary and secondary school age has increased by 14 million children. 10 million of this increase is in partner countries affected by fragility and conflict.
Source: GPE figures based on GEM 2025 Report
Two-thirds of out-of-school children of primary and secondary school age live in partner countries affected by fragility and conflict.
Source: GPE figures based on GEM 2025 Report
If the enrollment rate for secondary schooling is 10 percentage points higher than the average, the risk of war is reduced by about 3 percentage points (a decline in the risk from 11.5% to 8.6%).
Source: World Bank. Understanding Civil War, 2005 , p.16
Each year of education reduces the risk of conflict by around 20%.
Source: World Bank. Doing well out of war (Paul Collier), 1999 , p.5
Globally, 85 million children (37%) affected by crises are out of school: 52% girls, 20% children with disabilities, 17% forcibly displaced (13% internally displaced and 4% refugees and asylum-seekers).
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.2
50% of the 85 million out-of-school crisis-affected children are concentrated in just 5 protracted crises: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Sudan.
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.1
Children with disabilities are some of the most marginalized and affected groups in crises. They make up over 20% of out-of-school crisis-affected children (over 17 million).
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.2
Access to secondary education is dire: 36% of children of lower-secondary and 47% of upper-secondary school-age children are unable to access education.
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.2
Even when they are in school, many children affected by crises are falling behind. Only 17% of crisis-affected primary school-age children achieve minimum reading proficiency by the end of primary school.
Source: Brief: State of education for crisis-affected children and adolescents: Access and learning outcomes, Global estimates 2025 update, p.2
Education is one of the least funded humanitarian areas, receiving just 3% of global humanitarian financing in 2021.
Source: Geneva Global Hub for Education In Emergencies, 2022
Children account for 30% of the global population, yet they account for roughly 40% of refugee populations and 49% of internally displaced people, on average.
Source: UNICEF, 2024
Close to half of all refugee children – 48% – remain out of school. Gross enrollment rates for the 2020- 21 school year stood at 42% for pre-primary, 68% for primary, and 37% for secondary.
Source: UNHCR, 2022
Just 5% of refugee students are currently enrolled in university.
Source: UNHCR
The average annual cost of educating refugees is less than 5% of public education expenditure in developing nations hosting 85% of the world’s refugees.
Source: World Bank and UNHCR. The Global Cost and Inclusive Refugee Education, 2021
Developing regions hosted 92% of the world’s school-age refugees in 2017.
Source: UNHCR. Turn the tide: refugee education in crisis (2018), p.14
There were more than 5,000 incidents of attacks on education and cases of military use of schools between January 2020 and December 2021.
Source: GCPEA Education under attack, 2022, p.11

Financing

Since 2018, GPE raised $4.7 billion through innovative financing that otherwise may not have been invested in education.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
Children in high income countries received an education worth 155 times more (US$8,532 per child in 2022 constant US dollars) than the education received by children in low-income countries (US$55 per child in low-income countries).
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 7
Total loss to education aid due to cuts in several donor countries could be equivalent to 14%.
Source: What is the potential impact of recent cuts in aid to education? GEM Report, April 9, 2025

More data on education financing

Globally, total education aid (ODA) reached US$16.6 billion in 2022, up from US$14.3 billion in 2021, a growth in real terms of 16% year on year.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 3
In 2021, total education spending increased from US$5.7 trillion in 2021 to US$5.8 trillion in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 4
As of 2022, governments contributed around three quarters to total education funding (74.6%), while households contributed one quarter (25.1%), and donors' ODA accounted for 0.29% in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 5
While governments are the largest funders of education in all country income groups, their contributions differ significantly among those groups, ranging from 80.4% in high-income countries to 61.9% in low-income countries in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 5
Between 2010 and 2022, government education spending in low-income countries grew from 2.9 to 3.9% of GDP.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 6
In South Asia, government spending per child has more than doubled over the past decade, climbing from US$218 in 2010 to US$515 in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 7
To achieve national SDG 4 benchmarks, low-income countries and low- and middle-income countries would need to increase total education spending from governments, households and donors between 4.2% and 6.5% of their GDP over the period from 2023 to 2030.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 8-9
In most decentralized countries, subnational governments account for over 50% of total public education spending.
Source: Education finance watch 2023. p. 23
Globally, education spending as share of GDP has decreased from 4.5% in 2010 to 4.3% in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 6
In 2020, only 6 of 30 OECD Development Assistance Committee members (Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) met the target of 0.7% of gross national income to ODA.
Source: What is the potential impact of recent cuts in aid to education? GEM Report, April 9, 2025
For the past 15 years, ODA spending levels among OECD donors have stagnated at about 0.35% of their gross national income.
Source: What is the potential impact of recent cuts in aid to education? GEM Report, April 9, 2025
In low-income countries, aid accounts for 12% of total education spending, including household contributions.
Source: What is the potential impact of recent cuts in aid to education? GEM Report, April 9, 2025
Total global education spending grew in real terms by an average of 1.8% per year between 2010 and 2022. This rate of increase is slower than global economic growth rates.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 3
The share of total ODA allocated to education decreased from 9.3% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2022.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 3
For every US$100 that high-income countries allocated on education per child in 2022, low-income countries allocated less than US$1.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 7
Basic education, which encompasses pre-primary and primary levels, usually receives the largest portion of ODA, but its share declined from 52% in 2010 to 46% in 2022. In contrast, the share allocated to secondary education rose from 20 to 26%, while the share for post-secondary education remained steady at approximately 28%.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 10
The median level of government spending on education as a share of total public expenditure in Africa was 15.5% in 2021, down by 0.9 percentage points compared to 2012, largely due to increased debt servicing costs and the shift of resources to address the health needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2024. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 18
It is estimated that global education expenditure is over US$5 trillion. Public expenditure on education is significant; on average, countries spend about 4.5% to 5% of GDP on education, except for low-income countries.
Source: Education finance watch 2023. p. 19
Public education expenditure has remained constant at about 4.2% of GDP but the proportion of lower-income countries either in or at high risk of debt distress rose from 27% to 58%.
Source: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. 2023, p. 2
$97 billion: The annual gap in education financing to reach Sustainable Development Goal 4 by 2030.
Source: Can countries afford their national SDG 4 benchmarks? April 2023, p. 1
Sub-Saharan African countries account for the largest share of the financing gap: $70 billion per year on average.
Source: GEMR Policy Paper 49. June 2023. p. 7
About 40% of low- and lower-middle-income countries spend below international benchmarks for public education spending.
Source: Education Finance Watch 2022. World Bank, GEMR, UIS. p. 7
In sub-Saharan Africa, households account for 38% of total education spending, ranging from less than 5% in Ethiopia, Lesotho and Sao Tome and Principe to more than 67% in Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 145
The cost of 250 million children around the world not learning the basics translates into a loss of an estimated $129 billion per year, the equivalent of 10% of global spending on primary education.
Source: Brookings, 2014

Gender equality

133 million girls are out of school worldwide.
Source: Global Education Monitoring Report
51% of children supported with better education by GPE during 2021-2025 are girls.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
89% of active grants in 2024 (110 out of 123 grants) support gender equality in at least one activity. All grants approved under the GPE 2025 strategy support gender equality.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. May 2025
75% of girls finished primary school in 2022 in partner countries.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p. 63

More data on gender equality

On average, partner countries have achieved gender parity in primary education.
Source: GPE Results Report 2023, p.32
57.3% of girls completed lower-secondary school in 2022 in partner countries compared to 46% in 2013.
Source: GPE Results Report 2024, p. 64
In FY24, $384 million were allocated to grants supporting activities related to gender equality, including: $79 million for gender-responsive education infrastructure; $65.7 million for programs on gender-responsive teaching and learning; and $48.5 million for gender responsive health and hygiene.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. May 2025
The number of young women completing secondary school for every 100 young men increased from 102 to 105 globally, and from 84 to 88 in sub-Saharan Africa, which remains the region where young women face the largest disadvantage.
Source: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. 2023, p.1
The rate of progress for gender parity in upper secondary school completion was twice as fast in 2008–2020 than in 2000–2008.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p.6-7
Human capital wealth could increase by almost 22% globally with gender equality in earnings.
Source: Unrealized potential: the high cost of gender inequality in earnings, p.7
Universal secondary education could virtually end child marriage.
Source: Missed opportunities: the high cost of not educating girls (2018), p.52
If all girls get 12 years of schooling, human capital wealth could increase by $15-30 trillion.
Source: Missed opportunities: the high cost of not educating girls (2018), p.5
Women with primary education (partial or completed) earn 14% to 19% more than those with no education at all. Women with secondary education may expect to make almost twice as much, and women with tertiary education almost three times as much as those with no education.
Source: Missed opportunities: the high cost of not educating girls (2018), p.4
In 191 countries from 1990 to 2020, an increase in the percentage of women in parliaments has been correlated with improvements in educational parity indices.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.11
Nearly 1 in 3 adolescent girls from the poorest households around the world has never set foot in a classroom.
Source: UNICEF, Addressing the learning crisis: An urgent need to better finance education for the poorest children, p.3, January 2020
Only 35% of all university students enrolled in STEM-related fields are women.
Source: Cracking the code: girls' and women's education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), UNESCO, 2017, p.11
In low income and lower-middle income countries, women account for only a third or less of human capital wealth.
Source: Unrealized potential: the high cost of gender inequality in earnings (2018), p.5
Girls in conflict and crisis-affected contexts are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than their peers in non-conflict settings.
Sources: Show Humanity for Her: Education Cannot Wait for Girls in Conflicts and Disasters.
There is a gender gap of 20 percentage points in school leadership.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.5
In Latin America and the Caribbean, more boys than girls are out of school and the ratio has risen between 2015 and 2023 from 107 to 113 boys for every 100 girls.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.7
In reading, globally, 87 boys reach minimum proficiency for every 100 girls.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.7
Between 2018 and 2022, the prevalence of bullying increased for girls in 34 of 66 countries with data, while for boys it increased in only 22 countries.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.7
In 2019, only 16% of primary school principals in 14 francophone African countries were women. In contrast, female principals tend to be the majority in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe and in most countries in Latin America.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.7
Globally, 57% of secondary school teachers are women. However, in 70 countries with data, there is a gender gap of 20 percentage points in secondary school leadership positions.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.7
Globally, about 27% of education and higher education ministers were women in 2010–2023.
Source: UNESCO. 2025. Global Education Monitoring Report: Gender report – Women lead for learning. P.11

Inclusive education for children with disabilities

There are nearly 240 million children with disabilities in the world, 1 in 10 of all children worldwide.
Source: Seen, Counted, Included: Using data to shed light on the well-being of children with disabilities. UNICEF, 2021. p.176
GPE grants and cofinancing supported 1.4 million children with disabilities with better education between 2021-2025.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
$129 million in GPE grants supported education for children with disabilities in fiscal year 2025.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. September 2025

More data on inclusive education for children with disabilities

Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have essential reading and numeracy skills than other girls and boys.
Source: GPE annual report 2023, p.23
In 2020, GPE offered 66 accelerated grants to help countries respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 80% of them included initiatives that target children with disabilities to ensure learning continuity, such as accessible remote lessons, print materials in Braille, assistive devices and the promotion of supplementary support programs.
Source: GPE Secretariat
60% of partner countries reported key education statistics disaggregated by children with disabilities.
Source: GPE results report 2022, p.7
Globally, the share of schools with adapted infrastructure and materials for students with disabilities increased at all levels of education, and most significantly in upper secondary from 46% in 2015 to 56% in 2020.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p.10
Children with disabilities are 49% more likely to have never attended school compared to their peers without disabilities. They are also 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills.
Source: Seen, Counted, Included: Using data to shed light on the well-being of children with disabilities. UNICEF, 2021. p.176
Children with disabilities are 47% more likely to be out of primary school, 33% more likely to be out of lower-secondary school and 27% more likely to be out of upper-secondary school than children without disabilities.
Source: Seen, Counted, Included: Using data to shed light on the well-being of children with disabilities. UNICEF, 2021. p.176
Children with disabilities are at a significantly higher risk of violence (3 to 4 times more likely) compared to children without disabilities.
Source: Violence and bullying in educational settings: the experience of children and young people with disabilities. UNESCO, 2021. p.2
The literacy rate for adults with disabilities is 3%. For women with disabilities the literacy rate is even lower, at 1%
Source: UNGEI. Still left behind: Pathways to inclusive education for girls with disabilities, 2017. p.12

Learning and literacy

7 in 10 children in low- and middle-income countries can't read a simple story by age 10.
Source: World Bank. The State of Global Learning Poverty. 2022 Update. p. 8
$483 million invested by GPE in activities to improve learning in fiscal year 2025.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. September 2025
85% of GPE grants that measured learning reported improvement in learning, benefiting 81 million children between 2010 and 2023.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025

More data on learning and literacy

GPE grants targeting literacy resulted in improvements in children’s reading equivalent to 3 additional years of schooling.
Source: GPE key results 2021-2025
$128.3 million were invested by GPE in activities related to learning assessments in FY 2024.
Source: GPE grants by priority areas and education levels. May 2025
In sub-Saharan Africa, the youth literacy rate has increased from 66% in 2000 to 77.5% in 2020.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 7
In Central and Southern Asia, the youth literacy rate increased from 87% in 2000 to 91% in 2015 but has only increased by 0.8 percentage points since then.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 7
PASEC and SACMEQ data found that having their own textbook can increase a child’s literacy scores by up to 20%.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 79
In 10 out of 14 participating francophone countries in PASEC 2019, reading scores of students with a female head teacher were significantly better than those of students with a male head teacher.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 115
In sub-Saharan Africa, although 80% of primary-aged children are enrolled in school, only 62% graduate on time.
Source: The sustainable development goals report 2023. p. 20
Globally, the percentage of children one year younger than the official primary entry age who participate in organized learning programs, has remained stable at about 75% between 2015 and 2020.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 4
Of the 31 low- and lower-middle-income countries for which there are data since 2019, only Viet Nam has a majority of children achieving minimum proficiency in both reading and mathematics at the end of primary school. By contrast, in 18 of these countries, fewer than 10% of children are reaching minimum proficiency in reading and/or in mathematics.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 2
Only 14 countries representing 15% of the school-age population in Africa have at least two data points on minimum learning proficiency that would allow the long-term trend to be estimated.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 43
Since 2015, only 19 countries in reading and 18 countries in mathematics have reported data from school surveys.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 43
In 16 out of 22 sub-Saharan countries, at most one third of students are taught in the language they speak outside of school.
Source: UNESCO. 2022. Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, Paris, UNESCO. p. 79
The number of illiterate youth fell from 107 million in 2015 to 99 million in 2020, of which 36 million were in Central and Southern Asia and 49 million were in sub-Saharan Africa. Women are 56% of all illiterate youth.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 7
754 million adults lack basic literacy skills (women account for two thirds).
Source: UIS
Almost one in four youth in sub-Saharan Africa are illiterate.
Source: 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report: SDG 4 mid-term progress review. p. 8

Peace and security

On average, countries where more children complete basic education are more peaceful and experience less violence. Societies where more young people – especially women – are engaged in education, employment or training have lower levels of political instability, internal conflict and suffer less from the impacts of terrorism.
Source: GPE and Institute for Economics and Peace. (2024). Key Findings: Education and Peace
Quality education can be a powerful tool to combat discrimination and build learners' resilience to violent extremism and hateful narratives.
Source: UNESCO. 2023. What you need know about preventing violent extremism through education

Education data highlights

On this page

Access to education

Climate change and education

Domestic financing

Early childhood education

Economic growth

Education in crisis situations

Financing

Gender equality

Inclusive education for children with disabilities

Learning and literacy

Peace and security

Quality teaching

School violence

Skills for jobs

Technology