Data

Official entrance age to compulsory education

What you should know about this indicator

Official age when students should enter compulsory education assuming they start at the official entrance age for the lowest level of education, study full-time throughout and progressed through the system without repeating or skipping a grade. The theoretical entrance age to a given programme or level is typically, but not always, the most common entrance age.

Source

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Last updated

June 16, 2024

Next expected update

June 2025

Date range

1975–2023

Unit

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

June 16, 2024

Retrieved from

https://uis.unesco.org/bdds

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, 2024

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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.

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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: Official entrance age to compulsory education”. Our World in Data (2025). Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/official-entrance-age-to-compulsory-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 (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Official entrance age to compulsory education” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved April 26, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/official-entrance-age-to-compulsory-education