The world is going backwards on getting every child into school. The 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report paints a sobering picture: 273 million children and young people are now out of school – one in every six of school age – and the number has risen for the seventh year running. While some regions have pushed enrolment higher, sub-Saharan Africa is bearing the brunt, with conflict zones like Sudan facing what the report calls the planet’s largest education emergency.
When the world signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the promise was simple: every child, everywhere, would complete quality primary and secondary education by 2030. Eleven years later, that promise is slipping further out of reach. The 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, released this week, shows the number of children and young people out of school has climbed for the seventh consecutive year to 273 million. That is roughly one in every six school-age children on the planet.
Progress that once looked steady has now stalled. Between 2000 and 2015 the global out-of-school population fell sharply. Since then it has edged upwards, driven by a toxic mix of rapid population growth, armed conflict and deepening inequality. The report is blunt: without urgent action, the world will miss the 2030 targets by a very wide margin.
Sub-Saharan Africa Bears the Heaviest Load
Nowhere is the crisis more acute than in sub-Saharan Africa. The region now accounts for roughly half of all children and adolescents out of school worldwide. Population growth has outpaced the building of classrooms and the training of teachers. In many countries enrolment has risen impressively over the past two decades, yet the absolute number of children left behind keeps growing.
The GEM Report highlights how conflict is making things worse. Over one in six children globally live in conflict-affected areas, and the true out-of-school figure is likely even higher than the official statistics suggest. In places where fighting has destroyed schools or forced families to flee, education is often the first service to collapse.
Sudan: The World’s Largest Education Emergency
The report singles out Sudan as the most extreme case. Two years of brutal civil war have left 90 percent of schools closed or destroyed. Millions of Sudanese children have had their education interrupted for months or even years. Teachers have fled, textbooks have been burned, and entire generations are growing up without the most basic literacy and numeracy skills.
This is not just a Sudanese tragedy. When education systems collapse in one of Africa’s largest countries, the ripple effects are felt across the region – in refugee camps in Chad, South Sudan and Ethiopia, and in the long-term strain on neighbouring economies. The GEM Report warns that without massive investment in accelerated learning programmes and flexible pathways back into school, these children risk being permanently left behind.
South Africa’s Mixed Picture
South Africa stands in stark contrast to much of the continent. The country has made strong gains in enrolment. Almost every child now starts primary school, and secondary enrolment rates have improved significantly over the past decade. Yet the GEM Report and its accompanying Spotlight on South Africa reveal stubborn gaps in quality and completion.
Too many learners reach the end of Grade 9 or Grade 12 without the foundational skills they need to succeed in life. Dropout rates, especially in the critical transition from primary to secondary, remain a problem. The report notes that while access has improved, the system still struggles to deliver equitable learning outcomes, particularly for children from poor households and rural areas.
This quality gap matters. A child who sits in a classroom but leaves without basic literacy or numeracy is, in many ways, as disadvantaged as one who never enrolled at all. South Africa’s experience shows that enrolment alone is not enough – the real test is what children actually learn.
Education, Migration and the Xenophobia Debate
For South African readers the report carries an uncomfortable local message. Better education systems across the region are not just a moral imperative – they are a practical one. When millions of young people grow up without schooling, the pressure to migrate in search of opportunity increases. Poorly educated young men and women become more likely to cross borders looking for work, putting strain on already stretched public services in host countries.
The GEM Report does not say it directly, but the link is clear. Investing in quality education at home reduces the push factors that drive irregular migration. It builds human capital that keeps talent in the region instead of losing it to more developed economies. In the heated debates around xenophobia and border control that regularly flare up in South Africa, the report offers a quiet reminder: long-term solutions lie in classrooms across the continent, not just at Beitbridge or Lebombo.
What the Report Gets Right – and What It Demands
The 2026 GEM Report is the first in a three-part “Countdown to 2030” series. It focuses on access and equity, with future editions looking at quality and relevance. Its central message is that progress is still possible. Some countries – even poor ones – have dramatically reduced out-of-school numbers through smart policies: making education compulsory as well as free, building schools closer to communities, and linking school attendance to child labour laws.
Yet the report also warns that fragmented governance, underfunding and the failure to track the most marginalised children are holding many nations back. In sub-Saharan Africa, where education budgets are often split across multiple ministries, coordination is weak and resources are wasted.
For South Africa the lessons are clear. The country must move beyond celebrating enrolment numbers to tackling the harder issues of learning outcomes, teacher support and early childhood development. The GEM Spotlight on South Africa calls for stronger alignment between policy ambition and classroom reality.
The Human Cost of Inaction
Behind the statistics are millions of individual stories. A girl in rural Sudan whose school was bombed. A boy in a Johannesburg township who drops out in Grade 8 because the family cannot afford transport. A teenager in Lagos whose parents cannot find a place in an overcrowded classroom. Each one represents a future cut short, a talent wasted, a contribution to society that will never be made.
The GEM Report estimates that at current rates the world will not reach 95 percent upper secondary completion until 2105 – more than seventy years too late. That is not just a failure of policy; it is a failure of imagination and political will.
A Call to Action for Africa – and for South Africa
As the report lands, education ministers across the continent are meeting to discuss the findings. The message from UNESCO is urgent: accelerate enrolment where it is still low, but shift the focus to quality and retention where enrolment has already improved. Invest in data systems that can actually find the missing children. Link education policy to child protection, nutrition and labour laws.
For South Africa the report is both a pat on the back and a challenge. The country has done well on access. Now it must lead on quality. If it can show the region how to turn enrolment into genuine learning, it will not only help its own young people but also reduce the very pressures that fuel migration debates at home.
The 273 million children left out of school are not a distant statistic. They are the classmates who never arrived, the neighbours’ children selling goods on the street, the young faces we see in refugee camps and border towns. The GEM Report reminds us that education is not just a development goal. It is the foundation on which every other goal – peace, jobs, health, equality – depends.
Seven years of rising numbers should be a wake-up call. The next seven years will decide whether we turn the corner or watch the crisis deepen. The choice, as always, belongs to governments, donors and citizens who decide where the money and the political capital actually go.