Facts about school and education

All children - boys as well as girls - have a right to qualified schooling and education. This is right was established with the adoption of the Human Rights Declaration in 1948 and confirmed with the Children's Convention in 1989.

Yet, there are still a lot of children who do not go to school.

More than 100 million children (equating 18% of all children in the school age around the world) do not go to school. 60% of the children who do not go to school are girls. More than half of the children who begin school continue to the 5th grade.

There is a big difference between how many children go to school in different countries :

Denmark  99%
East Asia  96%
Central Asia  88-92%
Southern and Western Asia  67-74%
Latin America and the Caribbean  84-94%
Arab countries and Northern Africa  74-76%
Africa south of Sahara  54-60%

Poverty and tradition are the most common reasons why girls in some countries do not go to school or get less education than their brothers. If a family cannot afford to send all the children to school, they most often send the sons because boys are regarded as more valuable to the family than girls.

Even though much too many children still have to do without schooling and education, today there are many more children that go to school than ever before. During the last ten years, the number of the world's child population attending school has risen from 78% to 82% thanks to UNICEF's child schooling programmes - and this is despite of the fact that the number of children has gone up with almost 400 million during the same period.

By spending 9 billion US dollars a year globally, the dream of education for everyone would become reality. 9 billion US dollars sounds like a lot - but it is less than the amount of money that people in Europe spend on ice-creams alone during a year.

Source: UNICEF

Find more facts about education here: http://www.unicef.org/girlseducation/index.html