- T20 -

Building Brighter Futures Millions of children are not in school UNESCO reported that 67 million primary school age children were outofschool in 2021 with over half of these children living in subSaharan Africa. In this region 20 of all primary school age children 33 of all lower secondary school age adolescents and 48 of all upper secondary school age youth remain out of school. While these percentages are slowly decreasing the strong population growth means that the absolute number of children outofschool is actually rising. According to World Bank estimates high outofschool rates and low quality learning outcomes in the region mean that by age ten only 1 in 10 tenyear old children are able read and understand simple texts.