Over 500 Million Children Need Education, UN Meeting Highlights Global Schooling Crisis

More than 500 million children worldwide are in desperate need of education, with wars, displacement and climate-related disasters keeping millions away from classrooms or preventing those who attend school from gaining basic learning skills. The crisis was highlighted at the United Nations General Assembly this week, where governments and education organisations also announced fresh funding.

In war-torn Sudan, Maysa Jalbout, director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), recently visited a sixth-grade classroom where 120 children were being taught in temperatures reaching 44 degrees Celsius, without water or electricity. An 18-year-old girl displaced by fighting three years ago, forced into marriage and motherhood, told Jalbout she wanted to continue her education and asked her to ensure her siblings, cousins and orphaned friends could also attend school.

The school, however, was too small to accommodate hundreds of children waiting outside. Sudan's education crisis remains enormous, with more than 8 million children out of school, according to UNESCO and ECW. In August, ECW announced a US$22 million three-year investment expected to reach nearly 200,000 crisis-affected children in West Darfur, South Kordofan and Gedaref.

UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown said 273 million children are out of school, while another 270 million attend school but do not acquire basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills by age 11. He said conflict and climate change are major barriers and noted that the world remains far from its 2030 goal of quality education for all.

There were also fresh funding commitments. The Global Partnership for Education said US$3.5 billion had been mobilised to support education-system transformation in more than 90 lower-income countries.

Gaza remains among the most severe emergencies. ECW announced a US$3 million emergency investment expected to support 10,000 to 13,000 vulnerable children and adolescents in Gaza and targeted areas of the West Bank, prioritising children with conflict-related injuries or disabilities and those who have lost parental care.

For a third consecutive year, 660,000 children in Gaza remain out of school, while about 70,000 young children lack access to preschool. ECW said Gaza now has more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world, adding that the latest programme will provide accessible learning spaces, assistive devices, psychosocial support and pathways back into education.

The crisis is not limited to conflict zones. Following devastating floods in Nepal, ECW committed US$1 million to help 17,000 children, including 5,000 receiving education and protection support and 12,000 benefiting from disaster-risk reduction measures.

Worldwide, ECW says 258 million school-age children are affected by crises, while 93 million are completely out of school. The organisation is seeking US$600 million through its replenishment campaign to reach another 10 million children, with a high-level funding conference scheduled in Geneva on November 5.