UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2024: Key Findings on the Global Learning Crisis

Executive Summary: The State of Global Education in 2024

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2024/25, titled "Leadership in Education: Lead for Learning," was released at the Global Education Meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, on October 31, 2024. This landmark publication presents a comprehensive assessment of global education progress and paints a sobering picture of where the world stands on its commitment to universal quality education.

The report arrives at a critical juncture. With only six years remaining until the 2030 deadline for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) — which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all — the findings suggest that the world is significantly off track. While there has been undeniable progress in expanding access to education, the quality of learning outcomes, the equity of educational opportunities, and the adequacy of funding remain deeply concerning.

This report is not merely a statistical compendium. It introduces a powerful thematic focus on educational leadership, examining how the quality of leadership at every level — from school principals to education ministers — directly shapes student outcomes and system performance. The evidence is clear: effective leadership is the second most important school-level factor influencing student achievement, after teaching quality itself.

For professionals and organizations working in education, technology, development, and policy, the UNESCO education report 2024 provides essential benchmarks, actionable insights, and a framework for understanding the interconnected challenges that define the global education landscape today.

251 Million Children Still Out of School

Perhaps the most striking finding of the global education monitoring report is the persistent scale of educational exclusion. Despite decades of effort and billions in investment, 251 million children and youth remain out of school worldwide. This figure represents an enormous human cost and a significant barrier to global development.

There is a complex story behind this number. On the positive side, 110 million more children and youth have entered school since the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015. More children are in school today than at any point in human history. Completion rates are also improving: 40 million more young people are completing secondary school today compared to 2015.

However, the rate of progress has slowed dramatically. The out-of-school population has declined by only 1% in nearly ten years. To put this in perspective, in the eight years before 2015, the out-of-school population had declined by 43 million, or 14%. The current rate of progress represents a slowdown of over 90%.

Regional disparities remain stark and deeply inequitable:

• Low-income countries: 33% of school-aged children and youth are out of school
• High-income countries: Only 3% remain out of school — an 11:1 ratio
• Sub-Saharan Africa: Home to more than half of all out-of-school children and adolescents globally
• Conflict-affected areas: Crisis zones remain undercounted in official statistics, meaning the true scale of exclusion is likely even greater

These statistics underscore a fundamental truth about the global education crisis: while access has expanded at the top level, the most marginalized populations — those in low-income countries, conflict zones, and rural areas — continue to be left behind. As the World Bank's education division has repeatedly emphasized, without targeted interventions for these populations, universal education will remain an aspiration rather than a reality.

The Education Funding Crisis: A $97 Billion Gap

The UNESCO–World Bank Education Finance Watch 2024, published alongside the GEM Report, reveals the staggering scale of the education funding deficit. Meeting SDG4 by 2030 requires an estimated $97 billion in additional annual financing — a gap that continues to widen rather than narrow.

The current state of education financing exposes deep structural inequalities in the global system:

The investment gap between countries is not merely large — it is 155 times larger in high-income countries compared to their low-income counterparts. This disparity in per-learner spending directly correlates with outcomes: countries that invest more consistently produce better educational results, better-trained teachers, and stronger institutional frameworks.

Four in ten countries spend less than 15% of their total public expenditure and less than 4% of GDP on education — both internationally agreed benchmarks. This chronic underinvestment has cascading effects across the entire education system, from teacher salaries and training to infrastructure and learning materials.

The debt crisis compounds the funding challenge significantly. In Africa, countries spent almost as much on debt servicing in 2022 as they did on education. Meanwhile, the share of official development assistance (ODA) allocated to education globally has dropped from 9.3% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2022 — precisely when more funding is needed, less is being directed to education.

UNESCO is calling for innovative financing mechanisms, particularly debt-for-education swaps, where countries burdened by unsustainable debt could negotiate its conversion into education investments. This approach, if scaled through a multilateral platform involving UNESCO, the G20, and the Global Partnership for Education, could unlock significant resources for the countries that need them most. The approach mirrors similar models that have been explored for global risk mitigation in the WEF Global Risks Report.

Leadership in Education: The Report's Central Theme

The 2024/25 edition introduces a groundbreaking thematic focus on leadership in education, examining how leadership quality at school, system, and political levels directly influences educational outcomes. The findings challenge many assumptions about how education systems are governed and led.

A new global database compiled for the report reveals striking patterns about education leadership:

• Ministerial turnover: Half of education ministers since 2010 have left office within two years of appointment, severely limiting policy continuity and reform implementation
• Experience gap: Only 23% of education ministers have prior experience teaching in schools, raising questions about whether policy decisions are grounded in classroom reality
• Gender imbalance: Only 19% of education ministers globally are women, despite women constituting the majority of the teaching workforce in most countries
• Instructional leadership deficit: About one-third of public school principals in OECD countries report lacking sufficient time for instructional leadership — their core educational function

The report identifies four essential dimensions of effective educational leadership that national plans should nurture:

1. Setting expectations: Establishing clear standards and accountability frameworks for learning outcomes
2. Focusing on learning: Prioritizing instructional quality and student achievement over administrative tasks
3. Fostering collaboration: Building professional learning communities and shared decision-making structures
4. Developing human potential: Investing in teacher development, mentorship, and career progression

A critical finding is that only about half of leadership programs and courses for school leaders worldwide address all four of these dimensions. Many programs focus narrowly on administrative competencies while neglecting the instructional and collaborative elements that research shows are most strongly associated with improved student outcomes.

The evidence is compelling: effective school leaders are the second most important school-level factor influencing student achievement, after teachers themselves. In some African countries, schools led by women showed up to one additional year of learning gain compared to male-led schools, suggesting that diversity in leadership is not just an equity issue but a performance one. This finding connects to the broader workforce transformation trends documented in the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025.

The Global Learning Crisis: Enrollment Without Outcomes

One of the most concerning findings in the UNESCO education report 2024 is the growing disconnect between school enrollment and actual learning. This "learning crisis" — where children attend school but fail to acquire foundational skills — represents perhaps the most urgent challenge facing global education today.

The statistics are alarming:

• Despite over 95% primary enrollment rates in many developing countries, foundational literacy and numeracy remain disturbingly low
• Assessment data shows only 43% of students in developing nations can read at grade-appropriate levels
• In mathematics, proficiency rates are even lower — only 25% of 8th-grade students in some countries demonstrate basic math competency
• Globally, only 87 boys per 100 girls achieve minimum reading proficiency, dropping to 72 boys per 100 girls in middle-income countries

This learning crisis has profound economic implications. Students who complete school without acquiring basic skills face limited employment prospects, lower lifetime earnings, and reduced capacity to contribute to their economies. The World Bank estimates that "learning poverty" — the inability to read and understand a simple text by age 10 — affects approximately 70% of children in low- and middle-income countries.

The roots of the learning crisis are multifaceted. Teacher quality remains a persistent challenge: many countries face severe teacher shortages, and those teachers who are in classrooms often lack adequate training and support. Infrastructure deficits — including insufficient classrooms, textbooks, and sanitation facilities — further undermine learning conditions. Overcrowded classrooms in sub-Saharan Africa, where student-to-teacher ratios can exceed 60:1, make individualized instruction virtually impossible.

The report emphasizes that addressing the learning crisis requires a fundamental shift in how education systems measure success. Moving beyond enrollment-focused metrics to robust learning outcome assessments is essential. Countries must invest in periodic, standardized assessments that can track student progress and identify where interventions are most needed.

Gender Disparities and the COVID-19 Reversal

The UNESCO GEM Report 2024 presents a nuanced picture of gender dynamics in education, revealing both progress and alarming reversals driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the positive side, the global teaching workforce has become increasingly female, particularly at the elementary level. In many countries, women constitute over 60% of elementary teachers, contributing to more gender-sensitive learning environments. The growing presence of women in classrooms serves as a powerful role model for girls and helps challenge traditional gender stereotypes.

However, this progress at the classroom level contrasts sharply with leadership representation:

• Only 19% of education ministers globally are women
• In higher education, women hold only 13% of vice-chancellor positions in many university systems
• Less than 50% of countries require headteachers to undergo leadership preparation before appointment, creating opaque pathways that disadvantage women

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted particularly devastating damage on educational gender equity. Prolonged school closures disproportionately affected girls, especially in developing countries with limited digital access. The report documents a reversal of years of progress in mathematics proficiency, with girls now underperforming boys in math in countries including Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

The digital divide amplified these disparities. In regions with poor technology infrastructure, girls were more likely than boys to lose contact with their schools during lockdowns, more likely to be assigned household responsibilities, and more likely to face early marriage or pregnancy as a consequence of being out of school. These findings align with the broader technological transformation challenges examined in the Stanford AI Index Report 2025, which documents how technology can both bridge and widen societal gaps.

The report recommends targeted leadership acceleration programs for women in education, transparent merit-based recruitment for leadership positions, and specific recovery programs to address pandemic-related learning losses among girls.

Digital Education and the Technology Divide

While the 2024/25 GEM Report focuses primarily on leadership, its findings on digital education and technology access paint a critical backdrop for understanding modern education challenges. The technology divide has emerged as one of the defining inequalities of contemporary education systems.

The pandemic served as both a catalyst and a stress test for digital education. Countries with robust digital infrastructure were able to pivot relatively quickly to online and hybrid learning models. Countries without such infrastructure — predominantly low- and lower-middle-income nations — saw millions of students lose months or even years of learning with no viable alternative.

Key digital education findings from the report include:

• Infrastructure gap: Fewer than 50% of schools in low-income countries have reliable internet connectivity, compared to near-universal access in high-income countries
• Device access: In sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of students to computers in schools often exceeds 100:1
• Teacher digital readiness: Many teachers, particularly in developing countries, received little or no training in digital pedagogy before or during the pandemic
• Equity implications: Digital learning tools, when poorly implemented, risk widening existing inequalities rather than narrowing them

The report cautions against viewing technology as a silver bullet for educational challenges. Previous GEM Reports (particularly the 2023 edition on technology in education) have documented cases where technology investments failed to translate into improved learning outcomes because they were not accompanied by adequate teacher training, curriculum adaptation, and infrastructure support.

However, when deployed thoughtfully, technology holds significant potential. The report highlights successful examples of adaptive learning platforms, teacher professional development through digital tools, and data-driven education management systems that have improved outcomes. The challenge lies in ensuring that these innovations reach the schools and students who need them most, rather than further privileging already-advantaged populations.

SDG4 Progress: Are We on Track for 2030?

The honest assessment from the UNESCO education report 2024 is clear: the world is not on track to achieve SDG4 by 2030. While important progress has been made on some indicators, the pace and scale of change are insufficient to meet the ambitious targets set in 2015.

The SDG4 Scorecard, which tracks national benchmarks set by countries, reveals a mixed picture:

The rate of progress since 2015 suggests that at current trajectories, several key SDG4 targets will not be achieved until well into the 2040s or even 2050s. The 2030 deadline, once seen as ambitious but achievable, now appears unrealistic without dramatic acceleration in investment, policy reform, and international cooperation.

The Fortaleza Declaration, endorsed by over 40 Ministers of Education at the Global Education Meeting, issued a strong call to prioritize education as a key lever for more just and sustainable futures. It specifically called for mainstreaming climate education into curricula, promoting education for peace, and furthering gender equality — recognizing that education must evolve to address the pressing challenges of the 21st century.

Recommendations and the Path Forward

The UNESCO GEM Report 2024 does not merely diagnose problems — it provides a comprehensive set of recommendations for accelerating progress. These recommendations operate at multiple levels, from individual schools to international frameworks:

School-Level Recommendations

• Institutionalize leadership development: Mandatory certification and training programs for school principals and headteachers, covering all four leadership dimensions
• Distribute leadership: Move beyond the single-leader model to create collaborative leadership structures that engage teachers, community members, and students
• Prioritize instructional focus: Reduce administrative burden on school leaders to ensure they can devote adequate time to teaching and learning quality

System-Level Recommendations

• Invest in teacher quality: Improve teacher recruitment, training, compensation, and professional development — the single most impactful investment for learning outcomes
• Shift to learning metrics: Move beyond enrollment-based monitoring to robust, regular measurement of learning outcomes
• Promote gender equity in leadership: Launch targeted leadership acceleration programs for women and establish transparent, merit-based selection processes

International-Level Recommendations

• Scale debt-for-education swaps: Create a multilateral platform for converting unsustainable debt into sustainable education financing
• Restore ODA for education: Reverse the declining share of development assistance allocated to education (currently 7.6%, down from 9.3% in 2019)
• Strengthen accountability: Enhance the SDG4 monitoring framework with more granular, timely, and comparable data across countries

These recommendations mirror many themes found in other major global analyses, including the workforce skills gap identified in the McKinsey State of AI 2025 Report, which documents how education system failures cascade into workforce readiness challenges.

What This Means for Policymakers and Organizations

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2024 is more than an academic exercise. It is a call to action that carries implications for a wide range of stakeholders — from government officials to international organizations, from technology companies to civil society groups.

For policymakers: The report provides a clear framework for prioritizing education investments. The evidence on leadership effectiveness, the four dimensions of leadership, and the correlation between funding and outcomes give policymakers concrete levers for improving their education systems. The data also makes a powerful economic case for education investment, as the long-term costs of educational failure — in terms of lost productivity, increased inequality, and social instability — far exceed the costs of adequate funding.

For international organizations: The declining share of ODA for education is a troubling trend that requires urgent reversal. The debt-for-education swap proposal offers an innovative mechanism that could unlock significant resources, but it requires coordinated international action to implement at scale.

For technology companies: The digital divide in education represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Companies that develop educational technology solutions must ensure their products are designed for the contexts where they are most needed — low-resource environments with limited connectivity and infrastructure — rather than primarily for well-resourced schools that already have alternative options.

For educators and school leaders: The report validates the critical importance of instructional leadership and provides a research-backed framework for professional development. The emphasis on collaboration and distributed leadership offers pathways for improving school culture and student outcomes without requiring massive budget increases.

As UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay stated at the report's launch: "Education is the key driver of prosperous, inclusive and peaceful societies. Yet, quality education risks being the privilege of a few, if we do not take serious measures to give every child across the globe the same chance to learn and thrive."

The UNESCO GEM Report 2024 makes clear that the global community has both the knowledge and the tools to address the education crisis. What is needed now is the political will, financial commitment, and leadership quality to translate that knowledge into action. With only six years remaining until the SDG4 deadline, the window for course correction is narrowing rapidly.