United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in its recent global data, said Nigeria now has around 20 million out-of-school children.
It said there are 244 million children & youth in the age group of six and 18 around the world who are still out of school.
As per the statistics, India, Nigeria and Pakistan have the highest figures for out-of-school children globally.
The figure in Nigeria was between 10.5 and 13.5 million. But with the insecurity and kidnapping of school children, most parents are not disposed to send their wards to school.
UNESCO has made the announcement about the figures in a statement, part of which mentions that, “The new data which is published online by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, has shown that sub-Saharan African remains the region with the most children and youths out of schools.
It is also the only area where this number is growing; out-of-school rates are falling more slowly than the growing school-age population.
“The region with the 2nd most out-of-school population is Central & Southern Asia with 85 million. The top 3 nations with the most children and youth excluded from education are: India, Nigeria and Pakistan.”
As per the Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Silvia Montoya, efficient use of available data is important to address the gaps towards achieving the fourth goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The official said: “UNESCO has long highlighted the need to make more efficient use of the information we have. That’s why we’ve brought together administrative data along with information from surveys as well as censuses. By using multiple information sources, gaps are filled, data trends are smoothed, and we can draw consistent time series.”
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