Education gaps appear in who can enter school, who completes each level, and who reaches expected learning outcomes. In 2023, an estimated 251 million children and young people were out of school worldwide, while U.S. public-school graduation rates ranged from 68% among enrolled homeless students to 94% among Asian/Pacific Islander students in 2021–22. The statistics below show how these differences vary by age, gender, income, location, and student group.
Contents
- Global access and completion
- Gender gaps in enrollment and learning
- Income and socioeconomic gaps
- Rural, regional, and country-level differences
- U.S. high-school graduation gaps
- U.S. achievement gaps
Global access and completion
The global out-of-school population remained large in 2023. An estimated 251 million children and youth were out of school: 129 million boys and 122 million girls. The worldwide out-of-school rate declined from 17.2% in 2015 to 16.1% in 2023, but progress was uneven by national income.
| Measure in 2023 | Share or rate |
|---|---|
| Out-of-school rate in low-income countries | 33% |
| Out-of-school rate in lower-middle-income countries | 19% |
| Out-of-school rate in upper-middle-income countries | 8% |
| Out-of-school rate in high-income countries | 3% |
Source: Monitoring SDG 4 | Global Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2023 data).
Age matters as well. About 10% of primary-school-age children, 14% of lower-secondary-age adolescents, and 30% of upper-secondary-age youth were out of school globally in 2023. The figures indicate that access gaps widen as students move toward the end of secondary education.
Completion improved between 2015 and 2023, though the later stages remained much less complete. The global primary completion rate rose from 85% to 88%, the lower-secondary rate from 74% to 78%, and the upper-secondary rate from 53% to 59%. When students who complete late are included, the estimated upper-secondary completion rate reaches 62% rather than 59% on time. At primary level, 67% completed on time compared with 78% when delayed completion was included.
Completion is not the same as learning. At the end of primary school in 2023, 58% of students globally reached minimum reading proficiency and 44% reached minimum mathematics proficiency. At the end of lower secondary, the corresponding figures were 64% for reading and 51% for mathematics. These are global measures and do not describe every country equally.
Gender gaps in enrollment and learning
Gender differences change by region and education stage. In Eastern and South-eastern Asia, Europe and Northern America, and Latin America and the Caribbean, the out-of-school disparity widened from 107 boys per 100 girls in 2015 to 113 boys per 100 girls in 2023. This ratio describes the relative number of boys and girls out of school in the listed regions, not a worldwide ratio.
The direction of the completion gap also shifted over time. Globally, upper-secondary completion moved from 97 young women per 100 young men in 2010 to 97 young men per 100 young women in 2020. In other words, the reported gender balance changed from a female disadvantage to a small male disadvantage over that period.
Some gaps remain concentrated in lower-income settings. The World Bank reports that in low-income countries about 66% of girls completed primary school, compared with about 71% of boys. For lower secondary, 38% of girls completed school compared with 43% of boys. Globally, boys were 3.7 percentage points more likely than girls to be learning-poor in the latest data reported by that source.
Participation after secondary school can show the reverse pattern. Female tertiary enrollment exceeded male enrollment by more than 5 percentage points in over 100 countries, according to the World Bank’s latest reported data. In 38 countries with data, about 80 women were enrolled in technical and vocational education for every 100 men in 2023.
The OECD found that young men aged 15–24 were 4 percentage points more likely than young women to participate in technical or vocational education across OECD countries in 2022 or the latest available year in Education at a Glance 2024. The male-to-female participation gap was at least 8 percentage points in Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and Poland. In Saudi Arabia, the participation rate for men was more than four times the rate for women.
Education gaps can also correspond with employment differences. Among OECD 25–34-year-olds without upper-secondary attainment in 2023, women’s employment rate was 25 percentage points below men’s. Among those with tertiary qualifications, the difference was 6 percentage points.
Income and socioeconomic gaps
Household income is associated with differences before formal schooling begins. Across OECD countries, children from low-income families were 18 percentage points less likely than other children to be enrolled in early childhood education and care before age three in 2022 or the latest available year reported by the OECD.
The transition into adulthood also leaves a measurable gap. The OECD share of 18–24-year-olds not in employment, education, or training fell from 16% in 2016 to 14% in 2023. That is an overall OECD change and does not mean every country experienced the same decline.
Attainment affects earnings, but gender differences persist within attainment groups. Among OECD young adults with no upper-secondary qualification, women earned 15% less on average than men in 2022 or the latest available year. Among young adults with tertiary qualifications, women earned 17% less on average.
Some countries recorded substantial improvement in secondary attainment. Costa Rica, Mexico, Portugal, and Türkiye each increased the share of 25–34-year-olds attaining secondary education by at least 10 percentage points between 2016 and 2023.
Learning gaps can emerge even when enrollment is counted. More than 50% of children in low- and middle-income countries could not read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school, according to the World Bank’s latest estimate reported on its education trends page. This is a learning-poverty estimate for low- and middle-income countries, not a worldwide average.
The pattern of participation in education and training differs by national income and gender. In the comparison reported by UNESCO, 73 men participated for every 100 women in high-income countries, while in low-income countries only 50 women participated for every 100 men. Across countries with available data, the median youth enrollment rate in technical and vocational education increased from 2% in 2010 to 5% in 2023.
Rural, regional, and country-level differences
The rural-to-urban completion gap narrowed but remained substantial. The ratio of rural youth completing upper secondary school to urban youth improved from 41 per 100 in 2010 to 67 per 100 in 2022. A ratio below 100 means rural completion was still lower than urban completion.
The most severe combined disadvantage appears among some rural, poor, and female populations. Fewer than 1% of rural young women from the poorest 20% of households completed secondary school in 20 countries with available survey data, according to the World Bank. Because this finding covers those countries and survey data, it should not be generalized to every rural young woman worldwide.
Early access also varies sharply by region. Global enrollment one year before the official primary-school entry age was about 75% in 2023, compared with 49% in sub-Saharan Africa and 51% in Northern Africa and Western Asia. In South Africa, pre-primary enrollment was 70% for boys versus 57% for girls in 2022 or the latest available year in the OECD report.
Some country-level out-of-school rates were exceptionally high. Around 60% of children, adolescents, and youth were out of school in Afghanistan and Niger in 2023. More than 75% of upper-secondary-age children who were out of school lived in Central and Southern Asia or sub-Saharan Africa: 46% and 28%, respectively. For the full school-age, adolescent, and youth population, the out-of-school rate was 33% in low-income countries compared with 3% in high-income countries.
U.S. high-school graduation gaps
In the United States, the public-school adjusted cohort graduation rate was 87% in school year 2021–22. That was 7 percentage points higher than a decade earlier, covering the change from 2011–12 to 2021–22. Rates still differed considerably by racial and ethnic group.
| U.S. public-school student group | Adjusted cohort graduation rate, 2021–22 |
|---|---|
| Asian/Pacific Islander | 94% |
| White | 90% |
| Hispanic | 83% |
| Black | 81% |
| American Indian/Alaska Native | 74% |
Source: High School Graduation Rates, National Center for Education Statistics.
Other student characteristics show equally important differences. The adjusted cohort graduation rate was 71% for public-school students with disabilities and 72% for English learner students in 2021–22. It was 81% for economically disadvantaged students and 68% for enrolled homeless students. These are U.S. public-school rates for the stated school year; they should not be read as individual predictions.
U.S. achievement gaps
Graduation statistics do not capture all changes in learning. On the NAEP long-term trend scale, average reading scores for U.S. 13-year-olds fell 4 points from 2020 to 2023, while average mathematics scores fell 9 points. The share of 13-year-olds reporting five or more missed school days in the previous month doubled from 5% in 2020 to 10% in 2023.
NAEP age-9 scores also declined from 2020 to 2022–23: reading fell 5 points overall and mathematics fell 7 points overall. For age 13, mathematics fell 9 points overall from 2020 to 2023. The decline was 13 points for Black students, 10 points for Hispanic students, and 6 points for White students over the same period.
These NAEP changes describe average score movement on the assessment scale, not a percentage of students who failed. They also cover different age groups and reporting periods, so the age-9 and age-13 figures should be compared only within their stated measures.