Total net enrollment rate in primary education

What you should know about this indicator
- Not all children of the right age are enrolled in the level of education intended for them — the net enrolment rate indicator shows how many are.
- It captures the percentage of children in the official age group for a specific education level who are enrolled at that same level, such as primary or lower secondary.
- The indicator is calculated by dividing the number of students of the correct age enrolled in that level by the total number of children in that age group.
- For example, if primary education starts at age 7 and lasts six years, the official primary school age range would be 7 to 12 years.
- A high net enrolment rate means that most children are enrolled where they are expected to be. The highest possible value is 100%.
- The data comes from school administrative records, which track enrolment by single year of age, and from population estimates provided by national statistics offices or UN sources.
- This indicator is especially useful for monitoring progress toward universal primary and secondary education.
- However, it does not account for children who are enrolled in the correct level but are too young or too old, and it may miss students enrolled in the “wrong” grade for their age.
- Differences between enrolment and population data can lead to small errors. In some cases, the net enrolment rate may slightly exceed 100%.
- It's also not applied to tertiary education because of the wide range of entry ages and programme lengths at that level.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
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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: Total net enrollment rate in 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/total-net-enrollment-rate-in-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. “Total net enrollment rate in primary education” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved May 22, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-net-enrollment-rate-in-primary-education