Back to School season starts, but not for millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa

As the school year gets underway in many parts of the world, the Global Education Monitoring Report and UNESCO Institute for Statistics release chilling new estimates of children out of school: their figures reveal that 244 million children and youth aged 6-18 worldwide missed out on school in 2021. And numbers are on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa.

The results are published online on the VIEW website. They are based on a novel estimation method, which combines administrative and survey data. This new estimation of the out-ofschool rate marks a significant improvement to the robustness of the estimates that responds to the UN call for a data revolution.

This trend is even more pronounced for the most vulnerable children, especially for the 5.5 million forcibly displaced children, including over 850,000 refugees, in the West and Central Africa region, the vast majority of whom face great difficulties in returning to school.

Only days before the Transforming Education Summit, these figures remind us that the global education crisis is having a devastating impact on the future of children and youth around the world. It is hoped that this summit will elevate education to the top of the global political agenda and mobilise concerted action for real equity and inclusion in access to quality education for all children, including the most marginalised.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees