An estimated 270 million children worldwide are not enrolled in school this year, a figure UNICEF and education experts say has worsened amid rising conflict and cuts to international aid.
The 270 million figure — which includes about one in 10 young children and more than a quarter of teenagers globally — represents an increase of roughly 21 million children from the year before, according to UNICEF and recent reporting. The agency also warned that a projected $3.2 billion decline in international education aid by 2026, a 24 percent drop from two years earlier, could keep another 6 million children from attending school this year.
Conflicts and violence are a major driver of the global slide. The number of conflicts has roughly doubled in recent years, UNICEF said, and the ability to keep children in classrooms has become another casualty of war. Sudan presents the most acute emergency: about 16.5 million children — a large majority of the country’s roughly 19 million school-aged children — have been out of school amid a civil war that has pushed parts of the country toward famine.
In the Gaza Strip, almost all schools have been damaged or repurposed as shelters, leaving students and families with few safe options for in-person learning after nearly two years of heavy bombardment. In Afghanistan, aid cutbacks have threatened the continuation of clandestine community schools that had provided education to some of the 2.2 million girls and women barred by the Taliban from schooling beyond primary grades. Other countries affected by long-running violence, including Nigeria and Ukraine, also face steep education disruptions.
The COVID-19 pandemic had already set back learning worldwide, with extended school closures damaging reading and math skills and affecting children’s mental health. For children living in crisis settings, schools do more than teach: they often provide meals, social support and a measure of routine. Aid organizations and local communities have sought ad hoc solutions to preserve those services.
Humanitarian and civil-society groups point to a range of stopgap measures. In Ukraine, networks of underground classrooms that double as bomb shelters have enabled thousands of students to return to school. In Zimbabwe, nongovernmental organizations have sustained lunch programs that reach hundreds of thousands of children despite funding shortfalls. Makeshift tents and temporary classrooms have sprung up in parts of Gaza and Sudan to give some children a few hours of instruction and a brief return to normalcy.
International investment had made measurable gains in past decades: the number of out-of-school children globally fell by about 35 percent from 2000 to recent years. But experts caution that those improvements are fragile. Domestic education spending in many low-income countries has been declining even before the latest rounds of international aid cuts, and that trend is expected to compound access problems.
The economic consequences of widespread learning loss are substantial. UNESCO estimated last year that education gaps could reduce global economic potential by about $10,000 billion — roughly $10 trillion — a year by 2030 if current trends persist.
Policymakers and aid agencies face limited, concrete options to stem the decline in enrollment. Maintaining and targeting international aid, protecting schools from attack, supporting community-led alternatives and prioritizing school meals and psychosocial services are among the interventions that organizations say can keep children connected to learning. UNICEF and other groups emphasize that where investment has been sustained, enrollment and learning outcomes have improved.
For now, the back-to-school season in much of the world is marked less by sharpened pencils than by uncertainty. While many children in higher-income countries have returned to classrooms, millions elsewhere confront barriers erected by war, poverty and dwindling external support. UNICEF’s warnings underscore the scale of the challenge and the stakes for the future economic and social prospects of affected countries.