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Access to education
All children and adolescents have the right to education
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Our challenges
Between 2007 and 2020, 27.3 million children in the region accessed early childhood education services. Nonetheless, 5% of the population under 5 years old still lacks access to pre-primary education.
Estimates for the region show that between 2015 and 2019, the percentage of out-of-school children in primary education fell from 3.2% to 2.9% and increased from 6.1% to 6.8% in lower secondary education. A slightly greater improvement is observed in upper secondary education, where the percentage of out-of-school children fell from 22.7% to 21.3%1.
What do we do?
Our work focuses on the following:
- Helping strengthen national education management information systems (EMIS) to identify out-of-school children and adolescents and those most at risk of dropping out and advising on the formulation and implementation of policies and strategies for these groups.
- Promoting the allocation of sufficient and timely educational resources to ensure public spending is more equitable, efficient and effective and targets the poorest.
- Supporting the allocation of sufficient resources for quality preschool education while strengthening action plans to expand this education level and link it with services that promote health, nutrition, protection and early childhood learning.
- Prioritizing the most marginalized children and adolescents, including those affected by poverty, humanitarian situations and disability, as well as migrants, girls, and those belonging to ethnic minorities, by promoting campaigns against stigmatization and discrimination.
- Promoting teacher training in inclusive pedagogy, accessibility to schools and public buildings, and the availability of auxiliary devices and accessible learning materials in regular programs.
We promote specific strategies for secondary school-aged adolescents by:
- Supporting quality formal education in primary school (for adolescents who are still in primary school and those who have never attended school but are still of school age), and in secondary school, with emphasis on the most marginalized adolescents.
- Strengthening non-formal education and alternative models, with remedial, transition, accelerated and second chance education, skills training and apprenticeship programs, including recognition, validation and accreditation of non-formal learning.
- Promoting secondary education, learning and skills development for adolescent girls, with emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), to foster gender equality, promoting cross-sectoral work to eradicate early marriage, harmful social norms and gender-based violence in schools and communities
- Promoting the gender perspective and the transformation of harmful social norms in sector budgets and planning, with interventions in policies, curricula, teacher training and monitoring and evaluation in education systems.
Learn more about our work to promote access to education
1 UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations Children's Fund and Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Education in Latin America and the Caribbean at a crossroads: regional monitoring report SDG4 - Education 2030, OREALC-UNESCO Santiago, UNICEF, ECLAC, 2022.