Ensure that, by 2015, all children have access to and complete primary education that is free, compulsory and of good quality	Achieve universal primary education

The challenge

Universal education will speed progress towards all development goals

Almost all of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are interdependent, but achieving two of them – universal education (MDG 2), and gender equality and empowering women (MDG 3) – is vital to meeting all the others. 
  
Educating children helps reduce poverty. It is education that will provide the next generation with the tools to fight poverty and conquer disease. School also offers children a safe environment, with support, supervision and socialization. Here they learn life skills that can help them prevent diseases, like how to avoid HIV/AIDS and malaria. They may receive life-saving vaccines, fresh water and nutrient supplementation at school. 
  
Educating a girl dramatically reduces the chance that her child will die before age five, and improves her prospects of being able to support herself and have a say in her own welfare and in society.
  
This goal is also inextricably linked to MDG 3 – gender equality – as universal primary education, by definition, requires gender parity. 

Many countries are close to universal coverage

Universal education might seem a relatively straightforward goal, but it has proved as difficult as any to achieve. Decades after commitments and reaffirmations of those commitments have been made to ensure a quality education for every child, some 101 million children are still denied this right. 

101 million children of primary school age are out of school
Number of primary-school-age children not in school, by region (2007)

    

Source: UNICEF global databases, 2008, and UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data Centre, 2008.

However, attendance data based on household surveys show that the number of children of primary school age who are out of school has declined markedly in recent years, from 115 million in 2002 to 101 million in 2007. This is substantial progress, and many countries are close to delivering universal primary education.  
 
Yet, in some countries and regions the task remains enormous, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, where 46 million primary-school-age children are out of school, and in South Asia, where 35 million remain out of school.

Reaching end goals will require extra effort

For countries nearing universal primary education, reaching the last few per cent of children out of school may be a particular challenge, requiring different strategies as well as concerted effort and investment.

In more than 60 developing countries, at least 90 per cent of primary-school-age children are in school
Primary school net enrolment rate or net attendance rate (2000–2007)

Source: UNICEF global databases, 2008, and UNESCO Institute for Statistics Date Centre, 2008

85 per cent of primary-school-age children attend school
Primary school net enrolment rate or net attendance rate, by region (2000–2006)

References

UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2009, 2008.

UNICEF, Progress for Children, 2007.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Children Out of School: Measuring Exclusion from Primary Education, 2005.