UNESCO Releases 2026 Gender Report Detailing Global and African Education Access Findings

Key facts

• UNESCO's 2026 Gender Report 'Gender equity in access to education' and its Africa edition accompany the 2026 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report on access and equity.
• By 2024, global gender parity in enrolment had been achieved from pre-primary through upper secondary education, while tertiary enrolment stood at 88 young men for every 100 young women.
• Between 2000 and 2024, the share of countries with fewer than nine girls enrolled per ten boys fell from 15% to 2% in primary education and from 18% to 5% in upper secondary education.
• Africa achieved gender parity in primary enrolment in 2021; in 2024 there were 93 girls per 100 boys in upper secondary and 94 women per 100 men in tertiary enrolment across the continent.
• Of the estimated 273 million out-of-school children, adolescents and youth in 2024, 140 million were boys and 133 million were girls; Africa's out-of-school population was about 120 million, with 60.1 million girls and 59.9 million boys.
• Between 2000 and 2024, Africa's out-of-school rate for girls fell from 47% to 28%, narrowing the gender gap from eight percentage points to around one.
• In 2024, 11% of boys and 8% of girls globally were at least two years over-age in lower secondary education, compared with 37% of boys and 23% of girls in Africa.
• Among the poorest households in Angola, only 30 girls completed upper secondary school for every 100 boys, while in rural India only 59 girls completed for every 100 boys despite urban parity.
• Cambodia turned a 22-percentage-point girls' disadvantage in primary completion in 1981 into an 11-point advantage by 2024, and Nepal closed a 33-percentage-point lower secondary completion gap between 1990 and 2024.
• In 14 African countries, making lower secondary education free and compulsory increased attainment by 1.6 years for girls and 1.4 years for boys compared with making it free alone.
• In rural China, subsidies covering tuition, textbooks and living expenses raised poor girls' enrolment by seven percentage points, and Mali's Jigisemejiri safety-net programme doubled enrolment among girls of upper secondary school age.
• In Pakistan, girls travelling 45–60 minutes to school were 15 percentage points less likely to be in education than girls living 15 minutes away, while girl-friendly schools in Burkina Faso increased enrolment by 19 percentage points.