Education Access

One in every five children — from youth to adolescence — are not in school worldwide. Youth ages 15–17 are four times more likely to be out of school than children 6–11 ,and in sub-Saharan Africa alone, one in every three children are out of school.¹ Estimates show that approximately 50 percent of children out of school live in conflict areas.² By the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, nearly 15.4 million refugees have fled their home countries due to conflict and now have limited educational resources.³ Just 50 percent of primary school aged refugee children are enrolled in school, and 25 percent of secondary aged refugee children are enrolled in school.⁴ Syria has a particularly high number of children who have dropped out of school due to conflict at 1.9 million.⁵ Worldwide, 130 million women and girls — from the primary to the secondary level — are not in school.⁶ In a study conducted with a sampling of 100 countries, when increasing the number of girls completing 12 years of education by 1 percent, economic growth rises by 0.3 percent. On a global scale, that would yield an increase of $15 trillion in revenue annually⁷