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Duration of pre-primary education

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Global Education

What you should know about this indicator

  • The theoretical duration of pre-primary education refers to the number of years that children are expected to attend pre-primary education, as defined by national laws or regulations.
  • This indicator helps determine the school-age population by level of education and is a key input for producing education indicators and assessing a country's education supply capacity in relation to demand.
  • The duration is typically calculated based on the official starting and ending ages for pre-primary education, assuming students progress through the system without repeating or skipping grades.
  • For example, if pre-primary education starts at age 3 and ends at age 6, the theoretical duration would be 3 years.
  • Data on pre-primary education duration are collected from national legislation and formal education standards, and are mapped to the International Standard Classification of Education (International Standard Classification of Education(ISCED)) to ensure international comparability.
  • It's important to note that while legislation may define the duration of pre-primary education, actual implementation and enforcement can vary, and some children may not attend school for the full duration.
  • Changes in national education policies, such as extending or reducing the years of pre-primary education, can impact this indicator and should be considered when analyzing trends over time.
  • This indicator is useful for understanding government commitment to early childhood education and for planning resource allocation, but it should be interpreted alongside other indicators like enrolment rates and completion rates for a comprehensive view.
  • Limitations include potential discrepancies between legal provisions and actual practice, and differences in how countries define and implement pre-primary education.

Number of grades (years) in pre-primary education.

Duration of pre-primary education
The average number of years that a child is expected to spend in education, defined by country's official educational regulations or laws.
Source
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 1, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1970–2024
Unit
years

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official and trusted source of internationally-comparable data on education, science, culture and communication. As the official statistical agency of UNESCO, the UIS produces a wide range of state-of-the-art databases to fuel the policies and investments needed to transform lives and propel the world towards its development goals. The UIS provides free access to data for all UNESCO countries and regional groupings from 1970 to the most recent year available.

Retrieved on
May 1, 2025
Retrieved from
https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources/bulk
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Education, https://uis.unesco.org/bdds, 2025

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Duration of pre-primary education”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/duration-of-pre-primary-education [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Duration of pre-primary education” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved May 22, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/duration-of-pre-primary-education