264m children worldwide are not in school – UNESCO

Some 264 million school-age children and young people worldwide were not in education in 2015, the United Nations Culture and Education Agency said on Tuesday.
The agency, in a progress report on the UN’s development goals for education, said after a decline in the early 2000s, out-of-school rates have started to stagnate.
The agency said: “Worldwide, there was a completion rate of 83 per cent for primary education, falling to 45 per cent for upper secondary schooling.”
The agency meanwhile quoted household survey data from 128 countries for the 2010 to 2015 period.
There were 40 countries where fewer than one in four young people had completed secondary education, but only 14 where no less than 90 per cent had done so.
UNESCO Director General, Irina Bokova, however, called for more government accountability.
The report noted that while 82 per cent of national constitutions mention a right to education, only 55 per cent of countries make that right enforceable in the courts.
Bokova said: “Governments are the primary duty bearers for the right to education, yet this right is not justifiable or capable of being the basis for a court case in almost half of countries, and the primary course of action for those with a complaint is lost.”
While calling for accountability at all levels, the report said accountability measures for schools needed to be flexible and carefully designed.
The agency stated: “Schools may adjust to performance-based accountability systems in negative ways, gaming the system and avoiding sanctions to the exclusion of longer-term reforms.”