Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Appendix 1
Education projections and
country level education data
The education indicators proposed by the United Nations for Millennium
Development Goal 3 are:
• The ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education.
• The ratio of literate females to males among 15- to 24-year-olds.
This appendix reports projection results for primary and secondary enrollment
for the target years of 2005 and 2015 and tertiary enrollment and the
ratio of literate females to males for the target year 2015.
As discussed in chapter 10, each indicator has its limitations. The ratio of
girls to boys in school does not provide a reference point to assess actual enrollment
relative to the population of the age group that should be enrolled at that
level. Net enrollment rates, which take into consideration the appropriate age
for each grade, are a good indicator of access to education, but they are not
available for many countries. Gross enrollment rates are more widely available,
but they include repeat students in the calculation and so will be higher than
net enrollment rates. Moreover, even though enrollment is a good indicator of
the input side of education, it does not provide insights into student learning
outcomes.
The literacy indicator, which can be interpreted as an indicator of learning
outcomes, is also problematic. The quality of data is suspect in many countries.
Some countries collect literacy information using sophisticated and comprehensive
techniques while others are not able to provide even the most basic
information. In addition, because literacy is not a simple concept with a single
universally accepted meaning, different countries measure literacy differently.
The UNESCO definition (people are considered literate if they have completed
five or more years of schooling) has been widely criticized, because it
assumes that people can be easily categorized as “literate” or “illiterate” and
because adults with five or more years of schooling may still be functionally