Here’s a piece I wrote for the blog of (my client) the Global Partnership for Education, the leading multilateral organization promoting and supporting the development of primary education systems in developing countries around the world.
It’s a summary of the UN’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals Report, which noted advances in primary school net enrollment rates, decreases in the number of out-of-school students, rises in literacy rates for children and adults and a growing balance – and, in many countries and regions parity between girls and boys who go to and complete primary school.
At the same time, the UN report showed that the poorest children are still far less likely than there relatively well-off counterparts to receive an education. In many countries there are still large numbers of children who do not go to primary school at all and even more who go but do not finish.
“Despite enormous progress during the past 15 years,” the report concludes, “achieving universal primary education will require renewed attention in the post-2015 era, just as the global community seeks to extend the scope to universal secondary education….Interventions will have to be tailored to the needs of specific groups of children — particularly girls, children belonging to minorities and nomadic communities, children engaged in child labor and children living with disabilities, in conflict situations or in urban slums.”
Weintraub Communications 