Education: key facts and figures worldwide

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72 million children are currently out of school, the majority of whom are girls.
There are at least 771 million illiterate adults worldwide, of whom 64 per cent are women.
Two of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relate directly to education. MDG 2 aims to achieve universal primary education by 2015, ensuring that children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. MDG 3 – to promote gender equality and empower women – seeks to eliminate gender disparity in education. Its first target was to get as many girls as boys into school by 2005.
The first MDG target – to get as many girls as boys into primary and secondary school by 2005 – was missed in over 90 countries. In countries such as Niger and Burkina Faso, only one in three girls go to school at all.
In 2006, failure to reach the 2005 MDG gender-parity target will result in over one million unnecessary child and maternal deaths. Educated women have greater knowledg...

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