One of the first and most basic indicators that captures a child’s opportunity to get formal education is the enrollment rate. This tells us what percentage of children of a given age group are enrolled in school.

This doesn’t tell us how often they attend or the quality of their learning, but it gives us a basic insight into the number of children in school.

UNESCO maintains a database of estimated enrollment rates at all levels of education, from pre-primary to tertiary.

In this chart, you can explore the data for these different education levels, and for boys and girls separately.

From this data, we see:

• Globally, most children are enrolled in primary school, but this tends to drop off through secondary education.
• In many lower-income countries, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of adolescents are not enrolled in upper secondary education.
• Globally, girls are now almost just as likely to go to school as boys (both for primary and secondary education), but in some specific countries, girls are still at a large disadvantage.

You will notice that two indicators capture enrollment: “gross” and “net” rates.

Gross rates take all children enrolled in a given level of education and divide this by the population of children within the appropriate age group for that level (for example, aged 5 to 10 for primary education). This means they can include children who are older or younger than the “official age”, such as those who started school late or repeated a year. For this reason, rates can be over 100%.

Net rates only include children enrolled in school at the “official age”. So, an older child resitting a given year would not be included in the total.

While most children in the world now get enrolled in primary school, the time that they will spend in formal education varies a lot.

A child who completes primary school, but then only goes to secondary school for a year or two (if at all), will get far fewer years of education than one who completes primary, secondary, and then goes on to tertiary education. This “school life expectancy” tells us something about how much they can learn.

In the chart, you can explore several indicators that try to capture years of schooling at different education levels, and for each gender. You'll find the average years of schooling completed by today’s adults, the number of years that children starting school are expected to spend in education, and the learning-adjusted years that show what this time really means once we account for how much students actually learn.

From this data, we see that:

• The expected years of schooling for a child in a lower-income country — especially across Sub-Saharan Africa — can be less than 10 years, compared to 16 to 20 years in high-income countries.
• These gaps are even wider for adults within the population. The average number of years of schooling for adults in some poorer countries is as few as 2 to 3 years. That’s a whole decade less than the average across Europe or North America.
• Again, the differences are stark when we try to adjust for the quality of teaching. A child in Nigeria, Ethiopia, or Chad is expected to receive the equivalent of fewer than 5 years of quality learning. It’s less than half the amount for a child in the United Kingdom, Sweden, or the United States.
• In low-income countries, boys are expected to receive more years of schooling than girls. In lower-middle-income countries, this gap is closed. And at higher incomes, the trend is reversed because young women are more likely to go to university than young men.

Tracking inputs to education in the form of enrollment rates and time spent in school is important, but we also need to track basic outcomes of education.

Being able to read and write is a crucial skill for young people and adults, both for navigating daily life as well as being able to perform well in many jobs.

In the chart, you can explore literacy rates for young people, older people, and the adult population as a whole. This is also available by gender.

It’s important to note that this indicator only captures very basic literacy skills: being able to read and write a short, simple sentence with understanding. It has the drawback that it doesn’t test someone’s ability to engage with more complex language skills, nor does it test clear comprehension. These tests are much more resource-intensive and expensive to run, especially in lower-income countries.

You’ll notice that the map is very empty for most high-income countries. That’s because they reached near-universal levels by the late 20th century. Regular tracking has been scaled back, since changes are small and less relevant for education policy.

From this data, we see that:

• In a number of the world’s poorest countries — particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa — less than half of adults have this basic level of literacy.
• Younger people are much more likely to be able to read and write than older generations. In the world’s poorest countries, typically more than half of young people can read and write, compared to less than 20% in older generations.
• In many low- to middle-income countries, men are more likely to be literate than women. This is especially true among older adults.
• This gender gap has closed among young people in many countries, such as India, China, Ghana, and Rwanda. This is probably a result of the closing of the gender gap in school enrollment.