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One child in eight in developing countries gets no primary schooling, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday, which made it clear that the target of primary education for all the world's children by 2015 would not be met. Of the estimated 75 million children in the developing world who receive no primary schooling, about 55 per cent are girls. The UNESCO report said that, despite progress in countries like Tanzania and Ethiopia, one third of all children in sub-Saharan Africa did not go to school. UNESCO said that the numbers, based on official statistics for 2006, indicated that the UN goal of achieving universal primary education by the year 2015 - part of the world body's Millennium Development Goals - would be missed. Current projections for 2015 indicated that in poorer countries at least 29 million children, and probably many more, would be out of school. The UN agency, which presented its report at a conference in Geneva, blamed the situation on political indifference and poor policy-making by governments, but also on rich countries for failing to fulfill aid promises. It said the figures showed a vast gulf in educational opportunities not only between developed and developing countries but also within poorer economies between richer and poorer sectors. Children in the poorest 20 per cent of families in Ethiopia, Mali and Niger were one third as likely to be in primary school as children from the wealthiest 20 per cent, according to the report. In Peru and the Philippines, children in the poorest 20 percent had on average five years less education than children from the wealthiest families. Although enrollment in primary education was expanding in Arab countries and stood at 84 per cent of school-age children, 5.7 million were still getting no schooling, 61 percent of them girls, the report said. In Egypt, more than 95 per cent of children not in school were girls. East Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO said, had a 93 per cent enrollment in primary education in 2006. For the full report, visit: http://www.unesco.org/en/education/efareport [Source: International Herald Tribune] Further information
pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/177609e.pdf