Around the world, millions of children are preparing to return to school. For millions of children, adolescents and youth, however, there is no classroom to return to. Understanding who remains excluded from education also means looking at the conditions surrounding children, their families and their communities.
The beginning of a school year is an ordinary milestone in millions of households. There are new routines to organise, classrooms to return to, teachers to meet and another year of learning ahead. The date varies considerably across countries, but the expectation behind it is remarkably familiar: children go back to school.
For millions of children, that expectation remains out of reach. The 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report estimates that 273 million children, adolescents and youth were out of school in 2024, around one in six globally. After falling significantly between 2000 and 2015, the global out-of-school population has now increased for seven consecutive years. The figure is striking and the story behind it deserves even closer attention.
Progress has changed the challenge
Global access to education has expanded dramatically over the past quarter-century. There were 1.4 billion students enrolled in school in 2024, 327 million more than in 2000. Completion rates have also improved across primary and secondary education. This progress matters because it demonstrates what sustained investment, policy reform and the removal of barriers to education can achieve. It also helps us understand the challenge that remains.
As access has expanded, reaching children who remain excluded increasingly depends on understanding the specific barriers surrounding them. The 2026 GEM Report draws on 35 country case studies and concludes that educational exclusion cannot be addressed through a single reform. Keeping children in school and removing the constraints they face increasingly requires action that extends into other areas of policy and development. Those constraints are rarely experienced separately.
Poverty can affect a family's ability to absorb the direct and indirect costs of education. Rural geography can make schools harder to reach. Conflict can close classrooms and displace entire communities. Climate shocks can undermine livelihoods. Weak social protection can leave families with fewer options when income disappears. For some children, several of these pressures occur at the same time.
When education competes with immediate needs
The relationship between education and household economic security is particularly important when considering child labour. When families experience severe economic pressure, decisions that would otherwise appear straightforward can become difficult trade-offs. A loss of income, a failed harvest, displacement or another shock can change what a household needs from every member of the family. In these circumstances, children's work can become a coping strategy.
The consequences can extend well beyond the immediate crisis. School attendance may become irregular. Children may fall behind. Temporary interruptions can become permanent departures from education. This connection also runs in the other direction. Access to quality education is one of the conditions that helps protect children from child labour. Schools provide learning and skills, while also creating structure, social connections and pathways towards future opportunities. Protecting access to education therefore requires understanding what is happening beyond the school gates.
Crises are making exclusion harder to measure
Conflict provides one of the clearest examples. UNESCO warns that the global out-of-school population may itself be underestimated because crises disrupt both education and the systems used to measure participation. Supplementary humanitarian information suggests that at least another 13 million children and young people may be missing from global estimates in ten countries heavily affected by conflict.
Behind those estimates are very different realities. In Gaza, all of the estimated 550,000 children aged 6 to 17 were out of school throughout 2024. In Mali, 1,984 schools were non-functional because of the security crisis as of December 2024. In Haiti, attacks, insecurity and the use of schools as shelters contributed to school closures and disruption.
These examples illustrate how quickly the conditions supporting education can disappear. A functioning school matters. So do a secure livelihood, physical safety, access to social protection and a household's ability to withstand a shock without relying on children's work.
Keeping children in school means strengthening the conditions around them
This is an important part of how we approach child labour in agricultural communities. Our work begins with the recognition that child labour is connected to the wider circumstances in which children and families live. Across our programmes and partnerships, we work with communities, governments, companies and other stakeholders to strengthen the systems that help prevent child labour and support children's rights.
That includes improving access to education and strengthening community-based child protection. It also includes supporting sustainable livelihoods, building household economic resilience and helping communities identify and respond to child labour risks. These connections matter particularly in rural and agricultural communities, where household income, agricultural production, access to services and children's education can be closely intertwined.
A family with a more resilient livelihood is better positioned to absorb an unexpected loss of income. A child who can remain in education has greater opportunities to develop skills and pursue decent work in the future. Communities with stronger protection systems are better able to identify risks before they result in lasting harm. The beginning of a new school year offers a useful moment to reflect on what access to education really requires.
For hundreds of millions of children, the question is still whether the conditions around them will allow school to be part of their lives. Ensuring that it can be sustained, requires attention to those conditions and to the interconnected pressures that continue to shape children's opportunities.
Source: UNESCO, 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report: Access and equity – Countdown to 2030
