Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

01CHAPTER 202Education for All Global Monitoring ReportAn estimated56 millionchildren couldstill be out ofschool in 20155. This figure should notbe compared with thepartial projection in theEFA Global MonitoringReport 2009, whichtreated a smaller group ofcountries using a differentmethodology, and did notinclude countries such asthe Democratic Republicof the Congo and theSudan.The gender gap is shrinking. The share of girlsin the out-of-school population declined from58% to 54%.South and West Asia have achieved rapidprogress. The region more than halved itsout-of-school population – a decline of 21 million.The region also cut the share of girls in theout-of-school total, from 63% to 58%.Sub-Saharan Africa has registered strongprogress. During a period in which the size of itsschool age population increased by 20 million,sub-Saharan Africa reduced its out-of-schoolpopulation by almost 13 million, or 28%. Thestrength of the region’s progress can be gaugedby a comparison with the 1990s. Had the regionprogressed at the same pace as in the 1990s,18 million more children would be out of school.The limits to progress also have to beacknowledged. Not only is the world off trackfor the Dakar commitments, but there is causefor concern over the pace of change:The 2015 target will be missed. If the worldwere to continue the linear trend for 1999–2007,an estimated 56 million children would still beout of school in 2015. 5 Slower economic growth,pressure on education budgets and rising povertyFigure 2.7: Numbers of out-of-school children are decliningOut-of-school children by region, 1999 and 2007Out-of-school children (millions)12010080604020105 million486394572 million3691832Central AsiaNorth America and Western EuropeCentral and Eastern EuropeLatin America and the CaribbeanArab StatesEast Asia and the PacificSouth and West AsiaSub-Saharan Africaassociated with the global economic crisis couldsignificantly inflate this figure (Figure 2.8).Progress has slowed. The post-1999 overviewprovides a positive gloss on some disturbingunderlying trends. Two-thirds of the total declinein out-of-school numbers took place during thetwo years to 2004, when the numbers droppedby 22 million. In the three years to 2007, theout-of-school population fell by just 8 million.The slowdown illustrates one of the centralchallenges now facing governments: the closercountries get to universal primary education,the harder it becomes to reach children still outof school. That is why sustained progress willrequire a stronger focus on marginalization.South and West Asia dominated the reduction.Much of the decline took place in India, whichreported a fall of almost 15 million in out-ofschoolnumbers in the two years after the 2001launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (universalprimary education) programme. 6The deficit in sub-Saharan Africa remains large.Fully one-quarter of sub-Saharan Africa’sprimary school age children were out of school in2007 – and the region accounted for nearly 45%of the global out-of-school population. Half of thetwenty countries with more than 500,000 childrenout of school were in sub-Saharan Africa (seeFigure 2.12 below). Nigeria alone contributedover 10% of the global total. Progress in theregion has been uneven. Some countries withlarge out-of-school populations in 1999 havemade major advances; examples includeEthiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, the UnitedRepublic of Tanzania and Zambia. Ethiopia andthe United Republic of Tanzania each reducedout-of-school numbers by over 3 million between1999 and 2007. Countries making only limitedprogress include Liberia, Malawi and Nigeria.Conflict remains a major barrier. Children livingin countries enduring or recovering from conflictare less likely to be in school. Many suchcountries lack publicly available data and soreceive less prominence in international debatesthan they merit. But a lack of reliable data shouldnot deflect attention from the scale of the01999 2007Source: Annex, Statistical Table 5.6. The key aim of the programme is to universalize elementaryeducation by 2010. Commitments include constructing and improvinginfrastructure in deprived areas, along with measures targeted towardsareas with large marginalized populations (scheduled castes, scheduledtribes, Muslims) or low female literacy (Ayyar, 2008; Govinda, 2009);see also Chapter 3.56