Nigeria now has some 20 million children out of school, according to the latest global data on children out of school from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO, which says a new and improved methodology was used to arrive at the latest figures, said there are “244 million children and young people between the ages of 6 and 18 worldwide (who) are still not attending school. school”.

According to statistics, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan have the highest numbers of children out of school globally.

Figures in Nigeria have hovered between 10.5 million and around 15 million for more than a decade, and the situation is made worse by the deteriorating security situation in the country.

UNESCO released the figures in a statement issued Thursday, of which Dafalia Dimitra, a media specialist, made a copy available to PREMIUM TIMES with the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM), which is developed by an independent team and published by UNESCO..

The global organization said the team developing the report “has an official mandate to monitor progress in meeting the Sustainable Development Goal on education, SDG 4.”

The statement says in part; “The new estimates, published online by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM), show that sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region with the most children and young people out of school, with 98 million children and young people excluded of Education. It is also the only region where this number is increasing; out-of-school rates are falling more slowly than the rate at which the school-age population is growing.

“The region with the second highest population out of school is Central and South Asia with 85 million. The top three countries with the most children and youth excluded from education are India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

According to the director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Silvia Montoya, the efficient use of available data is important to address the gaps towards the achievement of the fourth goal of the SDGs.

“UNESCO has long underlined the need to make more efficient use of the data we have. That is why we have gathered administrative data with information from surveys and censuses. By using multiple data sources, gaps are filled, data trends are smoothed, and we can draw consistent time series,” the official said.