In the context of a summit on the Millennium Development Goals at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the multilateral organization and its Institute of Statistics released data that prove the urgency of acting to improve access to classrooms at a global level.

According to UNESCO, if countries were on track to meet the fourth goal of the 2030 Agenda, the education goal, nearly 60 million more children, teenagers and young people would be attending school right now.

Six million additional children would also have access to preschool and at least 1.7 million more teachers would have received training.

The outlook could not be more challenging, with an estimated annual financing gap of 100 billion dollars to help countries to achieve the 2030 goal of ‘Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.’

In this regard, UNESCO stressed the need for a new child to be enrolled in school every two seconds and for 1.4 million to be enrolled in early childhood education.

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