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COVID-19 highlights an opportunity for out-of-school children

The COVID-19 pandemic has had potentially very serious consequences for many children whose education and development have been badly affected by repeated and/or protracted school closures. At its peak, nationwide school closures impacted more than 1.5 billion learners, or over 90 per cent of the world’s student p...

Guidance on Distance Learning Modalities to Reach All Children and Youth During School Closures

As schools closed around the world due to COVID-19, many governments acted quickly to try and ensure that students continued learning through a number of distance learning modalities. As the crisis developed, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed large inequalities in access to technology and has led to a global widen...

30 September 2019

New Methodology Shows that 258 Million Children, Adolescents and Youth Are Out of School

This fact sheet presents the latest UIS data on education available as of September 2019. Despite the extensive work being done to implement Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which promises to provide universal primary and secondary education, evidence suggests that there has been little reduction in the glob...

31 December 2017

Early Warning Systems for Students at Risk of Dropping Out

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 ...

The effect of varying population estimates on the calculation of enrolment rates and out-of-school rates

Primary, lower secondary and upper secondary out-of-school rates are key thematic indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Precise estimates for these indicators are essential s...

Estimation of the numbers and rates of out-of-school children and adolescents using administrative and household survey data

This information paper characterises and explains variations between administrative and household survey estimates of the numbers and rates of out-of-school children (OOSC) at the primary and lower secondary levels, and suggests ways that data from the two sources might be harmonised. This document also discusses ...

Age adjustment techniques in the use of household survey data

The DHS is a health, population, nutrition and HIV survey, which collects education data primarily as a background characteristic for the estimation of fertility rates and other indicators of interest in its specified fields.

01 February 2017

Improving Education Participation

This handbook was developed to support countries and stakeholders currently developing policies, strategies and initiatives at national, district, community and school levels to prevent and respond to the issue of out-of-school children and dropout. UNICEF believes that each and every child should enrol timely, le...

01 December 2016

Monitoring Education Participation

An estimated 61 million children of primary-school age, 60 million young adolescents of lower-secondary school age and 142 million of upper secondary age are out of school, based on the latest figures as of 2016. The children who are not enrolled in school are often those from the most socially marginalized commun...