Out-of-School Children

Out-of-school children remain a high priority for the Global Partnership, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized from education systems.

Despite dramatic improvements over the last decade, progress towards achieving universal primary education has been slowing down over the last couple of years. 61 million primary school-aged children are still out of school and many others have dropped out of the education system.

The definition of ‘out-of-school’ encompass a wide range of realities and refer to children who:

• Do not have access to a school in their community;
• Do not enroll despite the availability of a school;
• Enroll but do not attend school;
• Drop out of the education system.

Income poverty, poor health and nutrition, disability, gender, ethnicity, child labor, migration, geographical disadvantages, cultural factors and situations of fragility and conflict contribute to limiting access to school and excluding children from a proper education.

Around 43% of out-of-school children live in sub-Saharan Africa and another 27% in South and West Asia. In both regions, girls are less likely to enroll than boys. Over 40% of the 61 million out-of-school children currently live in conflict-affected or fragile states and are at higher risk of being marginalized.

Challenges

Despite recent progress, it has become increasingly difficult to reach children who have remained excluded and marginalized from education systems. Reasons include:

• Current policies and strategies that are focused on reducing the number of out-of-school children are sometimes inadequate; available resources are not always used in an effective way.
• Out-of-school children face additional disadvantages and require additional expenses that are not always budgeted for in national education plans and programs.
• Reaching out-of-school children cannot be done by simply constructing more schools, distributing more books, or training new teachers. School systems should be strengthened with a special focus on reaching the out-of-school children.

OUR RESPONSE

As part of its mission, the Global Partnership supports its developing country partners in building, implementing, and monitoring national education strategies to reach out-of-school children. We recognize the need to strengthen school systems to include the most marginalized and hardest-to-reach children and overcome the barriers that prevent them from attending, staying, and finishing school.

Under the Global and Regional Activities (GRA) program, our initiatives include:

• Carrying out collaborative efforts with our partners to develop improved instruments that accurately identify the number of out-of school children and help understand the characteristics and the reasons why they remain excluded from education systems;
• Conducting assessments of how existing policies and strategies address out-of-school children and how effective these are, and recommend concrete actions to improve education plans;
• Assisting developing country partners set up policies and strategies to address out-of-school children’s specific needs.

• In discussions with Local Education Groups, decide on the content of GPE grant applications, calling attention to equity issues, in particular girls, and promoting the use of GPE funds to ensure that more children get access to a quality education.