Educational equity remains uneven across every stage of learning. In 2024, an estimated 273 million children and young people were out of school worldwide, while completion and learning outcomes varied sharply by income, location, gender, displacement, and access to technology. The figures below bring those gaps together across participation, attainment, assessed skills, and the conditions that shape whether education can continue.
Contents
- Global participation and completion gaps
- Wealth and location gaps across education cycles
- Gender, literacy, and foundational-learning disparities
- Socioeconomic gaps in assessed learning outcomes
- Learning poverty and pandemic-era regional disparities
- Displacement and digital access as equity conditions
Global participation and completion gaps
The global scale of exclusion is large even before differences in school quality are considered. The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report estimates that 273 million children and youth were out of school in 2024. About 140 million were boys and 133 million were girls. By age group, 79 million were of primary-school age, 64 million were of lower-secondary-school age, and 130 million were of upper-secondary-school age. These are current report estimates for 2024, reported by Monitoring education in the SDGs | Global Education Monitoring Report.
The out-of-school rate has remained around 17% globally since 2015. The global average conceals a substantial income divide: the rate was about 3% in high-income countries in 2024, compared with about 36% in low-income countries. The difference is therefore visible not only in the number of children outside school, but also in the likelihood that a child in a particular national income setting can participate at all. (UNESCO, Monitoring education in the SDGs | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2015–2024 and 2024.)
Completion falls as the education cycle advances. The global on-time primary completion rate was 88% in 2024, compared with 78% for lower secondary and 61% for upper secondary. “On-time” completion captures whether students finish at the expected stage rather than eventually completing after delays, so the progression across levels highlights where participation is lost or delayed. (UNESCO, Monitoring education in the SDGs | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2024.)
| Indicator | Global rate in 2024 |
|---|---|
| On-time primary completion | 88% |
| On-time lower-secondary completion | 78% |
| On-time upper-secondary completion | 61% |
Wealth and location gaps across education cycles
Income-related differences become especially pronounced in low-income countries. In 2024, 60% of students completed primary school on time, 37% completed lower secondary on time, and 20% completed upper secondary on time. When delayed completion is included, the corresponding ultimate completion rates rose to 71% for primary, 46% for lower secondary, and 25% for upper secondary. The comparison shows why a single completion measure can obscure both delay and eventual non-completion. (UNESCO, Monitoring education in the SDGs | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2024.)
Location and household wealth also separate students within low-income settings. For every 100 urban youth who completed upper secondary school in 2024, 30 rural youth did so. At the primary level, 40 youth in the poorest wealth quintile completed school for every 100 in the richest quintile. The ratio narrowed further at later stages: 20 per 100 at lower secondary and 13 per 100 at upper secondary. In high-income countries, the upper-secondary ratio was 66 students from the poorest wealth quintile for every 100 from the richest. These ratios compare groups within the stated country-income categories; they are not global averages. (UNESCO, Monitoring education in the SDGs | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2024.)
Gender, literacy, and foundational-learning disparities
Gender patterns in completion can change over time and differ by measure. Globally, 97 young women completed upper secondary school for every 100 young men in 2010. By 2020, the direction had reversed: 97 young men completed upper secondary for every 100 young women. These figures describe global completion ratios for the specified years, not a current estimate. (UNESCO, Monitoring SDG 4 | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2010 and 2020.)
The rural-to-urban upper-secondary completion ratio improved from 41 rural youth per 100 urban youth in 2010 to 67 per 100 in 2022. Improvement in the ratio still left a measurable location gap at the end of the reported period. (UNESCO, Monitoring SDG 4 | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2010–2022.)
Reading proficiency also shows gender differences that vary with national income. In the latest underlying data reported in UNESCO’s 2024 report, 88 males reached minimum reading proficiency for every 100 females in high-income countries. In middle-income countries, the ratio was 72 males per 100 females. This is an assessed-proficiency comparison, distinct from enrollment or completion. (UNESCO, Monitoring SDG 4 | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2024 report, latest underlying data.)
Socioeconomic gaps in assessed learning outcomes
Access to school does not guarantee comparable learning. In the latest underlying data reported by UNESCO, only 47 students from the lowest socioeconomic group reached minimum mathematics proficiency for every 100 students from the highest socioeconomic group. (UNESCO, Monitoring SDG 4 | Global Education Monitoring Report, 2024 report, latest underlying data.)
OECD’s PISA 2022 results provide a more detailed view among participating 15-year-olds. Across OECD countries, socioeconomic status accounted for 15% of the within-country variation in mathematics performance. In 8 of 80 countries and economies with available data, it accounted for at least 20% of performance variation. A one-unit increase in socioeconomic status was associated with 39 additional mathematics score points across OECD countries. The largest reported socioeconomic gradient was 53 points per status unit in the Slovak Republic; the Czech Republic, Israel, and Singapore each reported 51 points. (OECD, Equity in education in PISA 2022: PISA 2022 Results (Volume I), PISA 2022.)
Across OECD countries, advantaged students scored 93 mathematics points more than disadvantaged students. Forty-seven percent of socioeconomically disadvantaged students scored below mathematics proficiency Level 2, compared with 14% of advantaged students. Disadvantaged students were seven times as likely to score below Level 2 in mathematics and had more than five times the odds of low performance in reading. At the same time, 10% of disadvantaged students were academically resilient in mathematics, reaching their country’s top performance quarter. (OECD, Equity in education in PISA 2022: PISA 2022 Results (Volume I), PISA 2022.)
PISA defines socioeconomic groups within each country or economy using the bottom and top quarters of the ESCS index. That definition matters: the disadvantaged and advantaged groups are relative to their own participating system, so these comparisons should not be read as a single worldwide wealth threshold.
Learning poverty and pandemic-era regional disparities
Learning poverty measures a foundational outcome: being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. The World Bank estimated that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were in learning poverty in 2022. The estimate was 57% before the pandemic, in 2019. These are estimates for low- and middle-income countries, not a count of every child worldwide. (World Bank, 70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text, 2019 and 2022 estimates.)
The same source reported substantial regional differences. Learning poverty in sub-Saharan Africa was estimated at 86% before the pandemic in 2019. Modeled 2022 simulations reached 80% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 78% in South Asia, and 89% in sub-Saharan Africa. The regional 2022 values are modeled simulations rather than direct post-pandemic headcounts, so they should be interpreted as estimates of likely conditions under the stated model. (World Bank, 70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text, 2019 estimate and 2022 simulation.)
Displacement and digital access as equity conditions
Education equity is also shaped by whether children can remain safely in one place and reach learning resources. UNICEF estimated that children displaced by conflict and violence worldwide reached 48.8 million by the end of 2024. This included 19.1 million refugee children and asylum-seekers and an estimated 29.4 million children internally displaced within their own countries. Children represented an estimated 41% of the world’s internally displaced population from conflict and violence at that point. (UNICEF, Child Displacement and Refugees, end of 2024.)
During 2024, an estimated 23.3 million new internal displacements of children occurred worldwide. Conflict and violence caused 8.9 million of them, while disasters caused more than 14.5 million. UNICEF’s child-displacement estimate includes an age-based allocation assumption for internally displaced populations, so these figures are estimates rather than a complete direct enumeration of every displaced child. (UNICEF, Child Displacement and Refugees, 2024.)
Digital access is uneven across education levels. The latest UNESCO Institute for Statistics figures reported in its 2024 report indicate that about 40% of primary schools worldwide were connected to the internet, compared with about 50% of lower-secondary schools and 65% of upper-secondary schools. The figures refer to school connectivity, not whether each student has a device or reliable home access. (UNESCO, Accessibility and effective use of digital technology in education, latest data reported in 2024.)
The wider connectivity trend is faster than the school-level picture: internet users worldwide increased from 2.6 billion in 2013 to 5.6 billion in 2023. Approximately 80% of people aged 15–24 used the internet in the latest period reported by UNESCO in 2024. These figures indicate expanding reach, but they do not remove the differences in school connectivity, household resources, safety, language, or learning support that determine whether internet access produces equal educational opportunities. (UNESCO, Accessibility and effective use of digital technology in education, 2013–2023 and latest reported period.)