MANY young people around the world especialy the disadvantaged , are leaving school without the skills they need to thrive in society and find decent jobs, according to the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, due for release in October.This development is thwarting young people's hopes, and the education failures are jeopardizing equitable economic growth and social cohesion, preventing many countries from reaping the potential benefits of their growing youth populations.The report intends to examine how skills development programmes can be improved to boost young people's opportunities for decent jobs and better lives. However, a paper jointly released by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, shows that progress in reducing the number of children out of school has stalled. This not only denies millions of children their right to education, but also jeopardises wider development efforts. The paper sets out five reasons why reversing this trend is urgent.According to the latest data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), 61 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2010. The global out-of-school figure had been on a decline over the previous 15 years, falling from 105 million in 1990. Progress was greatest immediately after the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, when world leaders committed to achieve Education for All by 2015. In addition, efforts to improve educational access for girls have paid off. In 2010, girls accounted for 53 per cent of out-of-school children, compared with 58 per cent in 2000.Despite overall positive signs, the decline in out- of-school figures has slowed down since 2005. Worryingly, the number of out-of-school children has remained at 61 million over the last three years. Much of this global stagnation is due to trends in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of children out of school has actually risen over the past three years, from 29 million in 2008 to 31 million in 2010. Although enrolment has continued to rise, it has not kept pace with the increase in population.Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for half of all out- of-school children worldwide and has the highest out-of-school rate of all regions; almost one in four (23 per cent) primary school age children have either never attended school or left school without completing primary education. Out-of- school figures in sub-Saharan Africa have declined far less than in other regions, from 38 million in 1990 to 31 million in 2010.By contrast, South and West Asia have made great gains over the past two decades, reducing the number of out-of-school children by two-thirds from 39 million in 1990 to 13 million in 2010. In 2010, the out-of-school rate in South and West Asia was 8 per cent.The remaining regions have significantly fewer children out of school: Arab States (5.0 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (2.7 million), North America and Western Europe (1.3 million), Central and Eastern Europe (0.9 million), and Central Asia (0.3 million). Typically, it is the marginalised, the poor, remote rural populations, those affected by conflict, and, ethnic, racial and linguistic minorities, that are denied an opportunity for schooling, as analyses in EFA Global Monitoring Reports underscore. Exclusion from education also threatens development progress more generally.Out-of-school patterns vary across and within regions. In 2010, there were 19 countries with more than 500,000 out-of-school children. A number of these countries are in sub- Saharan Africa. Nigeria alone was home to 10.5 million out-of-school children ' 3.6 million more than in 2000 ' or 42 per cent of its primary school age population. Ethiopia had 2.4 million children out of school, which represents 18 per cent of the country's primary school age population. While this number is high, Ethiopia has made considerable progress since 2000, when 6.3 million children (60 per cent of the primary school age population) were out of school.Other countries with more than 500,000 out-of- school children in 2010 are in South and West Asia (Pakistan and India), East Asia and the Pacific (Philippines and Thailand), and the Arab States (Yemen).Of the 61 million children who were out of school in 2010, 47 per cent are expected to never enter school. A further 26 per cent have attended but left school, and the remaining 27 per cent are expected to enter school in the future.Regional data show large variations in these patterns. In Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab States, and South and West Asia, about half of all out-of-school children are expected to never enter school. In Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe, most out-of- school children will start school late. East Asia and the Pacific, as well as South and West Asia, have a large share of early school leavers among their out-of-school populations.The classification of out-of-school children by past and possible future school attendance yields important insights for policymakers. If the majority of out-of-school children in a country attended but left school, programmes and interventions should focus on reducing the dropout rate by improving the quality of education and addressing issues such as the direct and indirect costs of education. For children who are likely to attend school in the future, the goal is to ensure earlier entry into the education system. Children who are expected to never gain access to schooling ' roughly 28 million of the global number out of school ' pose the most serious challenges to policymakers.
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