Education Cannot Wait Report: 258 Million Crisis-Affected Children Facing Disrupted Schooling Worldwide
Education Cannot Wait said July 2, 2026, that 258 million school-aged children and adolescents were facing education disruption worldwide because of conflict, displacement, climate-related disasters and other emergencies. The figure is up from 234 million in 2025, an increase of 24 million, according to the newly released assessment reported by UNESCO.
The report also said that 93 million children and adolescents were currently out of school. Education disruption is a broader measure than permanent exclusion from education: It can include children whose schooling has been interrupted without meaning that they have permanently lost access to school.
A widening global education emergency
The figures provide a current benchmark for the scale of interrupted learning across crisis settings. They cover children and adolescents affected by conflict, displacement, climate disasters and other emergencies around the world, rather than identifying a single country or region as responsible for the increase.
That distinction matters. The assessment does not say that all 258 million children have permanently lost access to school, nor does it attribute the entire increase to conflict or climate change alone. It describes a global population whose education is being disrupted in different ways and under different emergency conditions.
For families, an interruption in schooling can mean more than missed classroom lessons. UNESCO said schools in crisis settings can also provide safety, psychosocial support and stability. When education systems are disrupted, those functions are affected alongside formal learning, according to the organization.
Why the numbers are difficult to compare
UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report published broader education context on March 25, 2026, reporting that 273 million children and young people were out of school worldwide. UNESCO said that total had risen for seven consecutive years.
The 273 million figure and the 258 million crisis-disruption figure should not be treated as identical measures. The approved reporting describes the latter as school-aged children and adolescents facing disruption linked to crises, while the Global Education Monitoring Report provides a broader worldwide out-of-school total. The categories may overlap, but the packet does not establish that they cover the same children or use the same methodology.
The 93 million out-of-school figure in the crisis assessment is also a global estimate. It may change as crisis data are updated, and the available information does not identify all of those children as living in the same countries or regions.
What happens next
The report gives governments and aid agencies a current measure of the education emergency and the funding challenge involved in keeping learning available during crises. It also places the number of affected children in the context of a wider pattern of rising exclusion from school.
UNESCO and its partners said they were working to connect emergency response, preparedness, resilience and recovery for education systems. That approach treats schooling as part of both immediate crisis assistance and longer-term recovery.
The source packet does not identify a specific funding deadline, country-by-country allocation or new binding policy attached to the July 2 report. The next known step is the continuing effort by UNESCO and partners to link those emergency and recovery functions while governments and aid agencies use the new figures to assess the scale of need.
Sources
- As crises grow, UNESCO advances efforts to keep every child learning, UNESCO
- More children out of school for the 7th year in a row, up to 273 million, UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report
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