The 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report evaluates worldwide progress toward universal access and equity, concluding that the ambitious goal of universal secondary completion by 2030 will likely not be met.
While 327 million more students have enrolled since 2000, approximately 273 million children and youth remain out of school—a figure that has stagnated since 2015 and increased in low-income countries.
The report critiques current data tracking, noting that global indicators often overestimate pre-primary attendance because 27% of children start primary school a year early.
Despite global gains in gender parity, wealth-based disparities remain deeply entrenched, with fewer than 1 in 10 countries maintaining a strong equity focus in their education financing systems.
UNESCO urges governments to move away from isolated "what works" interventions in favour of context-specific policy packages that combine legislation with targeted financial support for marginalised groups.
Education Stages and Progress Bottlenecks
Early Childhood: Global expansion has slowed significantly since 2015, severely hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Primary and Secondary: High rates of repetition and over-age enrollment continue to delay completion rates, particularly in poorer nations.
Post-Secondary: Enrolment has doubled worldwide to 44% in 2024, yet graduation rates lag, indicating high dropout numbers.
Financing Gaps: There is a highlighted lack of support for children with disabilities in pre-primary settings, and most national financing fails to prioritize equity.
Strategic Recommendations: Access and Equity Pathways
The 2026 GEM Report outlines a multi-dimensional framework for expanding access and institutionalizing equity across all levels of education.
1. Pre-Primary Education: Building the Foundation
Systemic Integration: Transition from fragmented oversight to integrated governance, ideally centralizing responsibility under the Ministry of Education to ensure curricular alignment.
Legal Mandates: Prioritize legislation for free and compulsory pre-primary education; data shows such laws significantly correlate with higher enrollment gains.
Targeted Demand Easing: Utilize conditional cash transfers and subsidies to remove affordability barriers for low-income households, who remain most reliant on private provision.
Co-located Infrastructure: Efficiently scale supply by adding pre-primary classrooms to existing primary schools, leveraging established administrative systems.
2. Primary and Secondary Education: Ensuring Progression
Reforming Progression Rules: Shift toward automatic promotion paired with mandatory remedial support to eliminate the "grade repetition" bottleneck that drives over-age enrollment and dropout.
Supply-Side Determinants: Focus on school construction to reduce travel distances—a primary lever for increasing female enrollment—and invest in school electrification and sex-specific latrines.
Cost-Effective Health Links: Institutionalize school-based health interventions (e.g., deworming and mental health counseling) as cost-effective methods to reduce absenteeism.
Eliminating Early Tracking: Delay academic tracking (vocational vs. academic streams) to prevent the institutionalization of horizontal inequality at a young age.
3. Tertiary Education: Transitioning to Mass Access
Diversified Financial Aid: Move toward income-contingent loans and needs-based grants to cover indirect costs (housing, transport), as standard debt is a leading driver of dropout among disadvantaged students.
Expanding Modalities: Scale Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and short-cycle vocational courses to provide flexible pathways for remote students and working adults.
Admission Equity: Transition from high-stakes competitive exams toward eligibility-based admissions or centralized matching systems to reduce barriers for marginalized groups.
4. Financing for Equity: The Redistribution Mandate
Fiscal Equalization: Adopt funding models that use explicit equity adjustments (e.g., Brazil’s FUNDEB) when transferring resources to subnational governments.
Intentionally Targeted School Grants: Increase the volume of block grants to disadvantaged schools; currently, these often represent less than 0.5% of total spending, limiting their impact.
Social-Education Synergy: Coordinate education budgets with Social Protection transfers to ensure households receive predictable financial support for school-age children.
Equity Focus Indexing: Governments should use the new Equity Focus Index to benchmark their trajectory from "latent" to "advanced" financing systems based on intended coverage and volume.
Report Focus: India’s Educational Trajectory
Early Childhood and Pre-Primary Education:
Early Entry Primary: India drive's the high global average of early primary entry; 51% of 5-year-oldsare enrolled in primary school rather than pre-primary education.
COVID-19 Impact: The share of children under 6 in primary school spiked from 35% in 2020 to 60% in 2022.
System Fragmentation: Delivery is split between rural anganwadi centers (MWCD) and state pre-primary classes, constraining quality assurance and curriculum alignment.
Targeted Success: Scholarships in rural Karnataka raised participation by 20 percentage points and resulted in sustained cognitive gains.
Primary and Secondary Education:
Completion Gains: India has successfully expanded lower secondary completion by at least 1.5 percentage points annually since 2000.
Remedial Innovation: The Pratham "TaRL" intervention has been scaled in partnership with state governments to group children by ability rather than age.
Health Linkages: The nationwide deworming program targets 240 million children, providing over 85% of treatments through schools.
Nutrition Policy: A 2001 Supreme Court directive for midday meals led to a 13% increase in enrolment, specifically in Grade 1.
Inclusion Challenges: While the RTE Act 2009 mandated a 25% quota for marginalized students in private schools, analysis finds it has had no impact on school segregation, with quota-admitted children often facing discrimination.
Social Capital: Adolescents (15–18) were less likely to leave school early if parents were active in PTA meetings and supervised homework during primary years.
Higher (Post-Secondary) Education:
NEP 2020 Targets: Benchmarks a trajectory to raise the higher education gross enrolment ratio to 50% by 2035.
Distance Learning: India hosts the world’s second-largest open university system (IGNOU, 3.1 million students), representing a major contribution to global access.
Public Resources: Offers free MOOCs through the SWAYAM portal, recognized for official course credits.
Student Welfare: Kerala’s Jeevani Programme provides free on-campus psychological support, addressing mental health as a barrier to completion.
What is "Teaching at the Right Level" (TaRL)? Pioneered by the Indian NGO Pratham, TaRL is a remedial educational approach that assesses children on foundational skills and groups them by learning level rather than age or grade. It acts as a catalyst for foundational literacy and numeracy by providing targeted instruction for one to two hours a day. This mechanism manifests as a transition from a "one-size-fits-all" curriculum to a learner-centric model that addresses individual skill gaps. Adopting TaRL is a primary lever for reducing repetition rates, which currently delay timely completion for millions of students in low- and middle-income contexts.
Policy Relevance: Coordinating Systemic Access and Equity
Institutionalises Foundational Learning Systems: UNESCO's recommendation to reform progression rules mirrors the NEP 2020's "National Mission on FLN," which benchmarks a trajectory for achieving universal foundational skills by Grade 3 to prevent later dropouts.
Integrates Early Childhood into Formal Schooling: The report's call for integrated governance supports the NEP 2020 mandate to incorporate Pre-Primary (Ages 3-6) into the formal 5+3+3+4 structure, signaling a paradigm shift toward ending the fragmentation between Anganwadis and schools.
Expands Flexible Pathways in Higher Education: Scaling SWAYAM and IGNOU as recommended serve as a cornerstone for India’s target to reach a 50% Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), allowing for credit transfers and flexible entry/exit points as outlined in the NEP.
Strengthens Equity-Driven Financing and Targeting: UNESCO’s Equity Focus Index act as a primary lever for India to evaluate its Special Education Zones (SEZs) and Gender Inclusion Funds, ensuring resources are intentionally redistributed to "aspirational districts."
Advances Digital Inclusion in Learning Access: MOOC-based delivery under SWAYAM signals a structural shift toward low-cost, scalable access, helping bridge geographic and infrastructure gaps in post-secondary education.
Builds Targeted Support for Vulnerable Students: Evidence such as Karnataka’s preschool scholarships (raising participation significantly) underscores the need for state-led financial incentives to improve access among disadvantaged groups.
Converges Vocational and Academic Pathways: Flexible learning recommendations align with NEP’s vocational integration from Grade 6, reducing rigid academic–vocational divides and improving workforce readiness.
Links Education Outcomes with Health Interventions: Institutionalising midday meals and school-based health programmes (e.g., deworming) addresses physiological barriers to learning, strengthening attendance and educational outcomes.
Signals System-Wide Expansion for Workforce Readiness: Raising higher education enrolment toward 50% GER by 2035 reflects a broader shift toward preparing a skilled workforce for India’s long-term growth trajectory.
Follow the Full Report Here: UNESCO: 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report - Access and Equity
