Millennium goal: Achieve universal primary education
Target: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

Literacy rate

Education is key to reducing poverty and sustaining development. School enrolment rates have increased over the past 15 years, and now over 85 percent of the world’s children attend school. More adults are literate than ever before.

But progress towards education for all still remains a challenge. About 774 million adults in the world are illiterate, and 72 million children—the majority of them girls—have never seen the inside of a school. Most live in developing countries. Many who do manage to go to school are not able to complete Grade 5—the accepted level for achieving functional literacy.

Since 2000, Canada has doubled its investment in basic education for developing countries. Access to quality education breaks the cycle of poverty, especially for girls and women. Studies show that educated women marry later, have fewer and healthier children, are less likely to acquire HIV/AIDS, and are better able to care for their families.

© CIDA PHOTO: DAVID TRATTLES

Did you know? Every year of schooling a girl receives means a reduction in poverty for her family, and a dramatic increase in child survival. Source: UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2008 Almost two thirds of the world’s 774 million illiterate people are women. Source: UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008 “Education can be the difference between a life of grinding poverty and the potential for a full and secure one; between a child dying from preventable disease and families raised in healthy environments; between orphans growing up in isolation, and the community having the means to protect them; between countries ripped apart by poverty and conflict, and access to secure and sustainable development." Source: Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel

• Eliminating gender disparity in all levels of education no later than 2015

Equality in education