TheCable

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says over 20 million children and youths are out of school in Nigeria.

The organisation disclosed this in a statement on Thursday, following the publication of its latest report on estimates for countries on out-of-school children and youths.

The organisation said 244 million children and youths worldwide — aged between six and 18 — “are still out of school”.

UNESCO also said sub-Saharan Africa accounts for the region with the highest figures — 98 million in total — adding that the figures were from several sources, with a new method now adopted for improved data capturing.

The organisation also said the new methodology helped to provide reliable data for countries such as Nigeria where such statistics are relatively unavailable.

“Multiple data sources – including information from surveys and censuses – have been cross-referenced by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report experts, in order that the figures reflect reality as closely as possible,” the statement reads.

“It is the first time that this methodology, previously used to estimate flagship health indicators, has been used in education, marking a significant improvement in the robustness of the estimates.

“Important data gaps have been filled in countries that have large out of school numbers but where no administrative data of good quality has been available for over a decade, such as Nigeria which has an estimated 20.2 million children and youth out of school, Ethiopia (10.5 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (5.9 million) and Kenya (1.8 million).

“With UNESCO’s help, 90% of countries have now set national benchmarks to assess progress towards quality education for all by 2030, including on out-of-school rates.”