Right to education

About the initiative, Children who miss out on school are among the most vulnerable and hard to reach in the world. They come from the poorest households and often have to work to help support their families. Some face discrimination as ethnic minorities. Others live with disabilities. Often they are girls. Half of the children who do not attend school live in…, Explore the OOSCI Operational Manual, Research and reports, UNICEF, UNESCO and ILO logos Children at the playground of their school in Niamey, the capital of Niger, Updated OOSCI Operational Manual, The fully updated cornerstone publication of the Global Out-of-School Children Initiative provides a how-to guide for conducting an OOSCI study and improving educational access and inclusion for all children Download the manual

The Global Out-of-School Children Initiative (OOSCI) Operational Manual is both a how-to guide for teams conducting an OOSCI study, and a resource guide for the broader education community concerned with equity and inclusion. For teams conducting an OOSCI study, it presents an innovative and systematic approach to determine the best policies and strategies to reduce exclusion in education. It provides guidance on the analysis of multiple data sources to calculate the number and profiles of children, adolescents and youth out of school and at risk of dropping out. The Manual also provides methodology to identify the supply, demand, quality and governance barriers these children face in accessing and completing their education. For the broader education community, the Manual can be used as a toolkit, with a wide range of valuable analysis approaches, practical tools and resources relating to: education data, specific profiles of out-of-school children, barriers to education, as well as policies and responses. The Manual provides valuable guidance for policy-makers, researchers or other education stakeholders who are developing documents, policies or advocacy related to out-of-school children and children at risk of dropping out. The Operational Manual was revised in 2023 to reflect recent advances in statistical methodology and policy analysis, as well as to address global agreements and issues (ex. SDG4, COVID). The 2023 Manual also reflects the findings of the 2018 Formative Evaluation, partner stakeholder consultations and a review of previous OOSCI studies.

This report is volume 2 in UNICEF's series on education participation and dropout prevention. This report explains the contexts in which an Early Warning System (EWS) is a good option to prevent dropout. It also presents a five-step approach to develop an EWS and questions that should be addressed to maximise its impact.

Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All, a report produced by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNICEF, could not be more timely. As the international community renews its commitment to advance every child’s right to education, it explores why global progress has stalled since the early 2000s, when millions of additional children poured into the world’s classrooms, and provides the data and analysis needed to move forward and reach every child excluded from education. With its rich combination of data and analysis, this report provides a nuanced assessment of why some children never make it into the classroom at all, why some children start going to school far later than others, and why some children are more likely than their peers to drop out before they complete their schooling. It reminds us—if any reminder were needed—of the critical need for good data to inform the educational policies that can reduce the barriers that continue to stand between children and their fundamental right to an education.

This country study provides a comprehensive, analytical overview of the issues of out-of-school children in Ghana as part of the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children. It presents detailed profiles of the most marginalized children in Ghana who are denied their right to education. It will serve as an excellent resource for policy reforms and designing of targeted interventions to tackle different barriers and circumstances that hinder children from enjoying basic education. In order to reach the last segment of children who are out of school, one-size-fits-all approaches would not work. Rather, more diversified and tailored strategies are required to attend to the specific needs of disadvantaged children, families and communities. Based on existing evidence and good practices, the study provides a number of innovative and practical ideas and recommendations that the Government and other stakeholder could draw on.  We strongly hope that the results of this study will serve as the catalyst of policy debate and programme innovation at all levels.

The Out-of-School Children Initiative – a partnership between UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics with support from the Global Partnership for Education – aims to significantly reduce the number of children out of school.  The Initiative works with governments to determine how many and which children are out of school, assess the barriers that  exclude them and develop innovative policies and strategies that will deliver children to the classroom and ensure that they are learning.