Out-of-School Children in Afghanistan against the Global Trend: A Critical Reading of the 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report
Abstract
The 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2026) presents a narrative of measured progress alongside increasing exclusion as we approach 2030: since 2000, enrollment has increased by 327 million, yet 273 million children, adolescents, and youth remain out of school, with the global out-of-school rate stagnating since 2015. This piece examines this situation through the lens of Afghanistan, utilizing insights from the Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025 (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025). It posits that Afghanistan is not just lagging behind global standards but is experiencing a deliberate regression driven by policy decisions rather than a lack of capacity. The paper also critiques two prevalent analytical assumptions in global education discourse: the conflation of the Report’s five SDG indicators with five “dimensions of equity,” and the framing of education as a supply-and-demand issue rather than a fundamental right. Consequently, numerical improvements (e.g., apparent gender parity in enrollment) coexist with the complete exclusion of girls beyond Grade 6, highlighting the limitations of indicators that are not validated against real-world conditions.
Introduction
The 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, the first in UNESCO’s three-part Countdown to 2030 series, arrives at a time when the multilateral consensus around Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 is visibly weakening (UNESCO, 2026). Funding levels are decreasing, and commitments are being reassessed. Simultaneously, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence presents both opportunities and challenges for education. AI has the potential to enhance access, personalize learning, and support learners in resource-limited or crisis-affected environments—possibilities that, if implemented equitably, could accelerate progress on stalled commitments. However, it also complicates traditional categories—access, attendance, learning—that have long been used to evaluate education systems, necessitating institutional adaptations that many systems struggle to implement swiftly, while raising questions about who benefits from these technologies and under what conditions. In this context, the Report’s focus on equity is timely, yet it prompts a critical question: how is equity measured, and what impact does this have on interpretive accuracy?
This paper engages with the Report’s key findings in relation to Afghanistan, where the Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025 (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025) illustrates an education system moving against the global trend. The argument unfolds in five steps. First, it summarizes the global landscape of progress and stagnation. Second, it offers a critical correction to a common misinterpretation of the Report’s analytical framework—specifically, the assumption that the five SDG indicators correspond to five “dimensions of equity.” Third, it contextualizes Afghanistan within the global benchmarks for out-of-school rates and completion. Fourth, it examines the structural factors contributing to progress identified in the Report and questions the effectiveness of the supply-and-demand framing increasingly used to model educational access. Fifth, it characterizes Afghanistan’s trajectory as a politically motivated regression with long-lasting implications.
The Global Picture: Measured Progress, Persistent Stagnation
The Report’s most frequently cited finding is that, overall, expansion is real. Since 2000, enrollment in primary and secondary education has increased by 327 million students—a 30% rise—alongside a 45% increase in pre-primary participation and a 161% increase in post-secondary enrollment (UNESCO, 2026). Globally, the out-of-school rate for children, adolescents, and youth dropped from 27% in 2000 to 17% in 2015. Completion rates have also improved across all levels: primary completion rose from 77% to 88%, lower-secondary from 60% to 78%, and upper-secondary from 37% to 61% (UNESCO, 2026).
However, these figures can also be interpreted in a different light. The rate of decline in the out-of-school population has stalled since 2015, and the absolute number of out-of-school individuals has increased for seven consecutive years, reaching 273 million in 2024 (UNESCO, 2026). This number is likely an underestimate, as the Report suggests that additional humanitarian data could add at least 13 million to the total in the ten most conflict-affected countries (UNESCO, 2026). At the current pace, universal upper-secondary completion will not be achieved until 2105 (UNESCO, 2026). Thus, the Report’s tone is neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic; it is diagnostic. Progress is uneven, and aggregate data can obscure areas where setbacks have occurred.
A Critical Note on the Report’s Architecture: Five Indicators, Not Five “Dimensions”
It is important to clarify a common misinterpretation circulating in discussions about the Report. The 2026 GEM Report does not measure equity through “five dimensions” such as gender, wealth, location, region, and disability. Instead, it tracks five SDG indicators: (a) the participation rate one year before primary entry (SDG 4.2.2), (b) the out-of-school rate (SDG 4.1.4), (c) the completion rate (SDG 4.1.2), (d) the tertiary education gross enrollment ratio (SDG 4.3.2), and (e) the parity index (SDG 4.5.1) (UNESCO, 2026). Gender, wealth, location, and disability are not separate indicators in this framework; they are the disaggregations applied to the fifth indicator—the parity index.
This distinction is significant. The parity index, as the Report notes, operates “almost mechanically”: its value reflects the underlying indicator, so changes in parity typically indicate the progress of disadvantaged groups at higher access levels, rather than independent equity initiatives by states (UNESCO, 2026, p. 5). Misinterpreting the five disaggregations as five dimensions of equity oversimplifies this methodological caution and risks leading to “flawed conclusions,” as the Report explicitly cautions—such as the now-disputed claim of universal primary completion in the early 2010s (UNESCO, 2026). For a country like Afghanistan, where the parity index appears to improve based on administrative data while girls above Grade 6 are entirely excluded from public schooling, distinguishing between an indicator and an equity outcome is crucial. It highlights the gap between a closing number and a disappearing population.
Afghanistan Against the Global Benchmark
Afghanistan clearly demonstrates the limitations of relying solely on indicators. The Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025 estimates that in 2024, approximately 2.13 million primary school-aged children are out of school, with 60% being girls (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025). At the secondary level, around 2.2 million adolescent girls have been barred from public schooling since the de facto authorities reinstated the ban beyond Grade 6 in 2022, with an additional 397,000 being prevented each academic year (UNESCO & UNICEF). Female enrollment in tertiary education has plummeted from 27% in 2019 to zero in 2024, while male enrollment has decreased by about 40% during the same period (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025). Furthermore, the female teaching workforce has significantly diminished, with the number of female university lecturers dropping from 2,599 in 2019 to 794 in 2024 (UNESCO & UNICEF).
A noteworthy aspect of the Afghan data is the discrepancy between administrative reports and field verification. The Education Management Information System (EMIS) indicates over two million girls enrolled in lower secondary education in 2024, and a gender parity index for primary education that has improved from 0.69 in 2017 to 0.84 in 2024 (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025). However, verified data shows that secondary enrollment for girls above Grade 6 is zero. The authors of the report include the EMIS figure, despite its flaws, to quantify the extent of exclusion and maintain administrative continuity should policies change (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025, p. 22). This methodological point is crucial: a gender parity index based solely on registry data would suggest progress in a country that has implemented one of the most extensive state-level exclusions of women from formal education globally.
On the global benchmark for completion, Afghanistan is at the extreme negative end. The national average for secondary completion is 31.3%, but in Urozgan province, it drops to 3.8% (UNESCO & UNICEF). For comparison, the global upper-secondary completion rate is currently 61% (UNESCO, 2026). These differences are not merely quantitative; they represent significant disparities, exacerbated by overlapping humanitarian challenges such as flooding, mass returns from Iran and Pakistan, and a Humanitarian Response Plan funded at only 22% (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025).
Completion Rates and the Schooling Pipeline
The 2026 Report suggests that completion rates have improved even where out-of-school rates have stagnated, due to increased system efficiency: repetition in primary education has decreased by 62% globally since 2000, and by 38% in lower secondary (UNESCO, 2026). However, late enrollment and over-age progression remain significant issues in low-income countries, where the gap between “timely” and “ultimate” completion is around nine percentage points (UNESCO, 2026). In Afghanistan, this efficiency argument is inverted. The primary constraint is not repetition but political exclusion. Approximately 93% of 10-year-olds in Afghanistan cannot read a simple, age-appropriate text, indicating a learning poverty rate among the highest globally and roughly 35 percentage points worse than the South Asian regional average (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025; World Bank, 2024). The schooling pipeline is leaking at both ends: children who are enrolled are not learning, and those who should be entering secondary school are being legally barred from doing so.
Drivers of Progress and the Limits of the Supply–Demand Framing
The Report attributes sustained global progress to several key factors: legal frameworks for free and compulsory education, school construction, inclusive education provisions, and reductions in the direct and opportunity costs of schooling, along with conditional transfers such as cash grants, scholarships, and school feeding programs (UNESCO, 2026). It also notes that fewer than one in ten countries has a sufficiently strong equity focus in its financing system (UNESCO, 2026). This finding deserves greater attention, as it suggests that even when standard policies are implemented, they often lack the redistributive design necessary to close existing gaps.
A more contentious aspect of global discourse, partly inherited by the Report, is the use of a supply-and-demand framework to model educational access. While this logic can be useful for cost and provisioning decisions, it conflicts with the legal status of education as a human right. A right is not merely a quantity demanded; it is a claim that persists regardless of effective demand. When access is rationed based on household-level cost–benefit analyses or when state responses depend on “demand signals” from communities, the framework shifts the responsibility for upholding rights from the state to the child. The Afghan situation sharpens this critique: demand for girls’ education remains strong, as evidenced by multiple field assessments cited in the Situation Report (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025); what has collapsed is the legal and institutional framework to support it. No supply-demand adjustments can rectify this, as the primary constraint is not price or preference.
The Afghan Reversal: Political Economy of Educational Regression
While the global narrative reflects slowing progress, Afghanistan’s situation represents active regression. Three key features warrant emphasis. First, fiscal compression: the de facto Ministry of Education allocates over 90% of its budget to teacher salaries, leaving little room for capital investments, materials, or maintenance (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025). Second, curricular reorientation: a February 2025 decree mandates a unified primary curriculum for general schools and madrasas, with Islamic subjects occupying nearly half of total instructional hours. An August 2025 directive instructs universities to eliminate 18 subjects—including gender studies, human rights, political systems and governance, and the history of religions—and to withdraw 679 books from circulation (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2025).
These actions do not reflect an under-resourced system struggling to meet global commitments; rather, they signify a re-engineering of the education sector that contradicts the SDG 4 framework. The system is becoming more centralized in governance, more theological in content, and more gender-segregated in participation. Each shift compounds the others: a curriculum that minimizes secular subjects is less compatible with the kankor exam and international tertiary pathways, while a teaching workforce devoid of women complicates the eventual restoration of girls’ schooling.
Conclusion
The 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report is a balanced document that acknowledges the achievements of the past quarter-century without suggesting that the SDG 4 commitments will be fulfilled by 2030. The Afghan case is particularly troubling, not merely as an example of underdevelopment—many countries face similar challenges—but as a case of state-directed regression amidst a progressive agenda. Three implications arise. First, indicators must be cross-verified against actual attendance, especially in contexts where administrative reporting may not align with policy realities. Second, the language used to analyze access should honor the legal status of education as a right and avoid framing that introduces market conditions into discussions of obligations. Lastly, the global community’s remaining efforts in Afghanistan—such as alternative schooling, teacher development, and literacy programs—need not only protection but also expansion, with the understanding that they serve as bridging measures for a system whose recovery will take decades. Without sustained engagement, the Afghan reversal risks becoming a model for other states to follow, suggesting that the right to education can, in practice, be retracted.
References
UNESCO. (2026). Global Education Monitoring Report 2026: Access and equity—Countdown to 2030. https://doi.org/10.54676/JLKL3223
UNESCO & UNICEF. (2025). Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization & United Nations Children’s Fund.
World Bank. (2024). Afghanistan Learning Poverty Brief 2024. World Bank Group.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2024). Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025. OCHA.
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2023). Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2022–2023. UNICEF.