Around the world, education is improving. Compared with a decade ago, 42 million more children are in school and millions more are completing both primary and secondary school. Tertiary education numbers are also up.
This is a huge achievement, but these trends conceal the fact that hundreds of millions of children fall outside this rosy picture, denied the right to a quality, basic education.
It still shocks me that every day 58 million children don't go to school at all and 40 percent of them will never enter a classroom. On top of that figure, 250 million children who attend school either don’t make it to fourth-grade or are unable to read or perform basic calculations, even after four years of school.