by David Shedrack

It is estimated that 244 million children and youth between the ages of 6 and 18 worldwide were out of school in 2021, of which 118.5 million were girls and 125.5 million were boys.

The results are based on a new, improved way of measuring out-of-school rates by the GEM Report and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics displayed on the VIEW website. It combines administrative and survey data, following a similar approach to the one applied before in the estimation of flagship health indicators.

The estimates confirm that, even before the onset of COVID-19, progress in reducing the out-of-school population had slowed down. At the same time, the results suggest a different distribution of this population by age group, while they fill gaps in the case of about 50 countries whose administrative data have been incomplete or lacking.