UN's Global Education Digest 2011

Global Education Digest 2011: Comparing Education Statistics Across the World

The UN has just released its annual education digest. This document contains a wealth of international statistical data on the state of education across the various continents and socio-political landscapes.

Here are some of the highlights:

• The number of students attending secondary school around the world is increasing dramatically and governments are struggling to meet the rising demand, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where there are enough school places for just 36% of children of age to enrol
• Globally, secondary schools have been accommodating almost one hundred million more students each decade, with the total number growing by 60% between 1990 and 2009. But the supply is dwarfed by demand as more countries approach universal primary education
  
• Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in which the gender gap is getting worse at the upper secondary level, with 8 million boys enrolled compared to 6 million girls; and girls also face significant barriers in South and West Asia

And for data geeks, the report contains a wealth of data on enrolment and teaching staff, measures of progression and completion, youth literacy, international flow of mobile students, etc.