This article was originally published on Devex.
Around the world, education is improving. Compared with a decade ago, 42 million more children are in school and millions more are completing both primary and secondary school. Tertiary education numbers are also up.
This is a huge achievement, but these trends conceal the fact that hundreds of millions of children fall outside this rosy picture, denied the right to a quality, basic education.
It still shocks me that every day 58 million children don't go to school at all and 40 percent of them will never enter a classroom. On top of that figure, 250 million children who attend school either don’t make it to fourth-grade or are unable to read or perform basic calculations, even after four years of school.
In sub-Saharan Africa, population growth and conflict are driving up the numbers of out-of-school children and progress on primary education has stalled. Hundreds of millions of children need a second chance to attain basic education. These children and young adults are trying to survive without the most basic skills that are essential for employment, health and understanding their rights.
It has been 24 years since the global goal of “education for all” was launched, carried forward to the Millennium Development Goals which expire in 2015. As governments negotiate a new set of post-2015 sustainable development goals at the United Nations, what have we learned?
What must we do differently to ensure that, after all this time, we will get the results that the world so urgently needs?