Girls’ enrolment parity masks gaps in school completion, UNESCO says

Girls and boys have reached global parity in enrolment from pre-primary through upper-secondary education, but that milestone has not removed major barriers to girls finishing school. UNESCO says early marriage and motherhood continue to disrupt education, with particularly stark school-exclusion figures for pregnant and young mothers in sub-Saharan Africa.

The global share of girls married before age 18 declined between 2000 and 2025, according to UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Gender Report. The figures the organization reports for 2025 remain substantially higher in two regions than the global share.

The comparison shows both progress over time and uneven levels across regions. UNESCO’s enrolment finding describes whether girls and boys are enrolled at comparable rates; it does not mean they complete school at the same rates. The report points to completion gaps that vary substantially by country, household wealth and location.

Completion gaps vary by place and income

UNESCO reports that Nepal closed a 33-percentage-point gap between girls and boys in lower-secondary completion between 1990 and 2024. Cambodia’s primary-completion pattern also changed over time: girls were 22 percentage points behind boys in 1981, but were 11 points ahead in 2024.

Those gains do not describe every community. In UNESCO’s examples of upper-secondary completion, there were 30 girls completing for every 100 boys in Angola’s least privileged households. In rural India, the reported ratio was 59 girls for every 100 boys. These are specific household and geographic comparisons, not measures of every household in either country.

For sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO estimates that 6 million pregnant and young mothers aged 10 to 19 were out of school in 2024. It says fewer than 5% of pregnant and parenting girls in the region return to school. The figures illustrate how enrolment parity at a global level can coexist with severe obstacles to continued schooling for particular groups.

Support and legal protections remain uneven

UNESCO identifies financial constraints, stigma, transport, childcare, water and sanitation facilities, and safety as barriers to completing school or returning after pregnancy. These obstacles can affect whether a young mother can attend classes and manage the practical demands of schooling; the report identifies them as barriers rather than presenting each as a separately measured cause.

The report also finds a gap in legal protections. In 2026, 58% of countries guaranteed education without sex- or gender-based discrimination in their legal frameworks, while 35% explicitly protected pregnant and parenting girls’ right to education. The figures describe the protections UNESCO counted in national legal frameworks; they do not indicate that the report itself changed any law or created a new right.

UNESCO cites girl-friendly schools in Burkina Faso as an example of an approach associated in its account with higher enrolment. It reports a 19-percentage-point rise in enrolment overall, with larger gains for girls. The example offers a concrete contrast to the barriers identified in the report, but does not establish that the same results would occur in other settings.

UNESCO’s October 8 press release reported the findings. Its event listing scheduled a report launch in Paris for October 9, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.; a separate report page says the edition was released on October 11, and the press release says it was published on the occasion of that date, the International Day of the Girl Child. UNESCO’s pages therefore give different dates for the launch and release.