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Out-of-school rate for children of primary school age

See all data and research on:
Global Education

What you should know about this indicator

  • Many children and adolescents around the world are not in school, even though they are old enough to be. This indicator shows how many are missing out on education at each stage of the system.
  • It measures the share of individuals in the official age range for a given level of education who are not enrolled at that level or in any higher level.
  • These children or adolescents may have never entered school, may have dropped out, or may be starting later than expected.
  • The indicator is calculated by subtracting the number of enrolled individuals in a specific age group from the total population of that group, and expressing the result as a percentage.
  • High out-of-school rates signal barriers to access — such as poverty, gender inequality, location, or limited availability of schools — and highlight where more targeted support is needed.
  • The data comes from administrative school enrolment records and household surveys, which provide age-specific insights when compared to population estimates.
  • As with all education data, results should be interpreted carefully. Differences in how enrolment is defined, inconsistencies in age reporting, and timing of data collection (such as during holidays or late in the school year) can affect accuracy.

The number of students of the official age for primary education is subtracted from the total population of the same age. The result is expressed as a percentage of the population of the official age for primary education. For more information, consult the UNESCO Institute of Statistics website: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/

Out-of-school rate for children of primary school age
Percentage of children in the official primary school age group who are not enrolled in any level of education.
Source
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 1, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1970–2024
Unit
%

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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.

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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: Out-of-school rate for children of primary school age”, 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://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250716-141306/grapher/share-primary-school-age-out-of-school.html [online resource] (archived on July 16, 2025).
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) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Out-of-school rate for children of primary school age” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved July 19, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250716-141306/grapher/share-primary-school-age-out-of-school.html (archived on July 16, 2025).