Striving for Universal Primary Education

MDG2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

• Target: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

The UN’s goal to ensure a full course of primary schooling to children all over the world has made tremendous progress, though that has slowed since 2004. In 1999, 106 million children school-aged children were not enrolled. Almost half were in sub-Saharan Africa, which only had 56 percent enrollment in primary education, while a quarter were from Southern Asia.

In developing regions the overall proportion of children enrolled in primary education rose from 82 to 90 percent from 1999 to 2004, after which progress was reported having slowed considerably. Data has consistently demonstrated that children in rural households are far more likely to be out of school than children in urban households are, and girls largely struggle to receive any form of education in cultures that consider it useless to educate females. Furthermore, the drop-out rates in sub-Saharan Africa reach as high as 30 percent, adding to the challenges.

While the world is not set to meet MDG2, we have made substantial progress. In 2010, the number of children out of school had reduced from 106 million to 61 million, and even in sub-Saharan Africa the rate increased from 58 percent of children in school to 76 percent.

Nina Mansour is an intern at InterAction.

In the year 2000, after a decade of conferences and summits, the UN created the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a series of eight goals with concrete targets to achieve by 2015. With just three years until December 31, 2015, the world is beginning to evaluate how close we are to achieving the MDGs and to look forward. This eight-part blog series highlights some of the successes and challenges as we close out 2012.