Education has enabled upward social and economic mobility and is an important means of escaping poverty. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made towards improving access to education and enrollment rates at all levels, especially for girls. However, around 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 - nearly one-fifth of the world's population in this age group. In addition, more than half of children and adolescents around the world do not meet minimum proficiency standards in reading and math.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, the majority of countries announced temporary school closures, affecting more than 91 percent of students around the world. By April 2020, an estimated 6.1 billion children and young people were out of school. The 369 million children who rely on school meals had to find other sources for their daily nutrition.
Never before have so many children been out of school at the same time, disrupting learning and changing lives, especially among the most vulnerable and marginalized. This global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that could jeopardize hard-won gains in improving global education.
