Figure shows the percentage of children of official school entry age who are not in school. They are further disaggregated according to the likelihood that they will enter school in the future. Globally, 28% of all children at official school-entry age are not in school.

This indicates that one out of four children are out of school for one or more years of their primary school-age span. Eventually, most of them attend school for more than one year. Nevertheless, 12% of children will never attend school – or one in 10 children will grow up excluded from education.

In West and Central Africa, as well as in Eastern and Southern Africa, almost 60% of all children at official school-entry age are not in school. Most of them will never attend.

The same is true in South Asia, where 36% of children at entry age are not in school. The picture is quite different in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and the industrialised countries. Here, there is also a significant proportion of children at entry age who are not in school (14%), but almost all of them can be expected to start later.