Universal Primary Education

The second of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals focuses on achieving Universal Primary Education. This goal aims to ensure global access to complete primary education for all children, regardless of gender, by 2015. Education plays a crucial role in achieving all Millennium Development Goals, as it equips future generations with the necessary tools to combat poverty and prevent diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS.
Despite recognizing the importance of educational investment, a joint report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNICEF titled "Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children" revealed that the 2015 target for universal primary education was not met. The report indicated that as of 2015, approximately 58 million children of primary school age worldwide were not receiving formal education.

Achieving universal primary education

Since 1999, there has been great progress towards achieving universal primary enrollment due in large part to a pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals and the Education for All. The number of primary school-age children who are out of school has dropped by 42% between 2000 and 2012, despite rapid population growth.
Greater than half of countries and regions worldwide have a net enrolment rate of more than 95% and either already have or are close to achieving . However, despite an increase in enrollment over the past decade, global progress has stalled since 2007, and net enrolment or attendance is less than 80 percent in about 20 countries. Of the 58 million children out of school:

23% attended school in the past but left
43% are likely to never enter school
34% are likely to enter school in the future

Roughly half of all out-of-school children come from just a few countries, many of them characterized by conflict, instability, and extreme poverty. West and Central Africa is home to one-third of all primary school-age out-of-school children, making it the region with the lowest rates of school participation. Challenges to achieving universal primary education are exacerbated in unstable regions, as they have greater difficulty in accessing financial support.
The barriers which prevent children around the world from obtaining primary-level education are diverse and require tailored responses. Children living in conflict-affected areas account for "Just 20% of the world's children of primary school age but 50% of the world's out-of-school children." Additionally, inequalities in wealth significantly impact out-of-school rates. In many countries, children from the poorest 20 per cent of the population are less likely to attend school than those who are better off. Despite overall improvements, girls continue to be at a disadvantage as 53%—more than half—of the estimated 58 million primary age out-of-school-children, are girls. A research paper published in December 2019 found that in 2017, 1 in 6 women aged 20–24 had not completed primary school.

Factors contributing to lack of access and poor attendance

Location (climate)

Location contributes to childrens' lack of access to primary education. In certain areas of the world, it is more difficult for children to get to school. For example, in high-altitude areas of India, poor weather conditions for more than 7 months of the year make school attendance erratic and force children to remain at home.
In these remote areas, lack of funds contributes to low attendance rates by creating undesirable and unsafe learning environments. In 1996, the General Accounting Office reported that poor weather conditions existed in many rural areas; one out of every two rural schools had at least one inadequate structural or mechanical feature. In these situations where regular school attendance is rare, a low population contributes to the problem. In other locations, large numbers are often the cause of low attendance rates.
Due to population growth, many urban schools have expanded their boundaries making school transportation more complicated. "For over 50 years, the U.S. has been shifting away from small neighborhood schools to larger schools in lower density areas. Rates of children walking and biking to school have become low significantly over this period". There is evidence to prove that the distance to and from school contributes to a child's attendance or lack of attendance. In a study done while investigating the relationship between location and school attendance in Mali, about half of the villages reported that the school was too far away for students to enroll.
There is still a supposition as to whether primary schools are more accessible in rural areas or urban areas because situations differ depending on geographic location. In a study examining the correlation between location and school attendance in Argentina and Panama, researchers found that urban residence was positively correlated with school attendance, but another study in a Louisiana school district found that schools with the lowest attendance rates were in metropolitan areas.

Gender

Gender contributes to a child's lack of access and attendance to education. Although it may not be an obvious problem today. Gender equality in education has been an issue for a long time. Many investments in girls' education in the twentieth century addressed the widespread lack of access to primary education in developing countries.

Region	Out-of-school rate	Out-of-school rate	Out-of-school rate	Out-of-school number	Out-of-school number	Out-of-school number
	Both sexes	Male	Female	Both sexes	Male	Female
Caucasus and Central Asia	5.7	5.4	6.1	0.3	0.3	0.2
Developed regions	3.1	3.4	2.9	2.3	1.3	1.1
Eastern Asia	3.0	3.0	3.0	2.9	1.6	1.4
Latin America and the Caribbean	6.0	6.2	5.8	3.6	1.9	1.7
Northern Africa	0.9	1.0	0.7	0.2	0.1	0.1
Oceania	11.5	8.9	14.3	0.2	0.1	0.1
South-Eastern Asia	5.2	5.3	5.1	3.3	1.7	1.6
Southern Asia	6.2	5.8	6.8	11.4	5.5	5.9
Sub-Saharan Africa	21.2	19.2	23.3	34.2	15.6	18.6
Western Asia	10.7	7.8	13.7	2.6	1.0	1.6
World	8.9	8.1	9.7	60.9	28.9	32.1

Boys not in education outnumber girls in the majority of regions. In 2014, girls outnumber boys in regions with the worst attendance, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in the total number of girls out of education being approximately 11% higher than the number of boys out of education world-wide.
In 25 countries, the proportion of boys enrolling in secondary school is higher than girls by 10% or more and in five countries, the gap exceeds 20%. Enrollment is low for both boys and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, with rates of just 27% and 22% respectively. It is generally believed that girls are often discouraged from attending primary schooling for religious and cultural reasons, but there is little evidence available to support this assumption. However, there is evidence to prove that the disparity of gender in education is real. Today, some 78% of girls drop out of school compared with 48% of boys.

Cost

Cost is a significant factor affecting access to and attendance in primary education, particularly in developing countries. It encompasses various expenses such as tuition, room and board, and other fees associated with schooling.

Opportunity costs

High opportunity costs often influence the decision of children to attend school. For example, UNICEF estimates that 121 million children of primary school age are kept out of school to work in fields or at home. For many families in developing countries, the economic benefits of not attending primary school can outweigh the perceived benefits of education.

Direct costs

Besides opportunity costs, school fees can be prohibitively expensive, especially for poor households. In rural China, for instance, families may dedicate as much as a third of their income to school fees.
The relationship between school fees and attendance is complex. While official statistics in China report a low dropout rate, some experts question these figures, noting that dropout rates in rural areas appear to be much higher.

Other factors

among parents can also contribute to children's inability to attend school. When jobs are scarce and parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, education often becomes a lower priority.
The cost of education can vary significantly depending on whether a school is public or private. Public schools are generally less expensive because their needs are mostly covered by government funding, unlike private schools which rely on tuition from families.
Even when schooling is relatively inexpensive, some families still struggle to afford associated costs such as:

Food
Transportation
Uniforms
Tuition fees
School supplies

While the exact relationship between cost and attendance rates is not fully understood, there is substantial evidence that cost is a significant factor affecting children's access to and attendance in primary education.

Language

In developing countries throughout the world, the educational context is characterized not by monolingual settings but rather multilingual settings. Often, children are asked to enroll in a primary school where the Medium of Instruction is not their home language but rather the language of the government or another dominant society.
Children who are taught their mother tongue at an early age tend to have the ability to communicate with outsiders who understand it too. Most times, the mother tongue is known generally by people who live together and are from the same state. The language introduced to a child at a tender age makes it easier for the child to learn faster if taught in that language. Learning another language of a dominant society as a child can make it difficult for the child to understand, thereby causing lack of attendance in school.
Studies throughout the world demonstrate the importance of the Medium of Instruction in determining a child's educational attainment. According to Mehrotra :