Africa/Global: Increased education attendance, but disparities

Children everywhere are spending more time in school than ever before, but there remain substantial differences between countries and regions, according to UNESCO’s Global Education Digest 2004. According to the Digest, a child in Finland, New Zealand or Norway can expect to receive over 17 years of education, almost twice as much as in Bangladesh or Myanmar and four times as much in Niger or Burkina Faso. The new edition of the Digest presents the latest global education indicators, one example of which is school life expectancy (SLE), or the number of school years that a child, on average, is likely to spend in the education system.