As of October 2011, the UIS Data Centre has been updated to include available data for the school year ending in 2010, as well as new indicators on educational attainment and out-of-school children of lower secondary school age.
Key findings on educational attainment, based on 2010 census results, include:
• In 13 out of 15 countries with data in sub-Saharan Africa, less than one-half of the adult population (aged 25 years and over) has completed lower secondary education.
• In South Asia, the share of the adult population with at least lower secondary education ranges from 25% in the Maldives to 74% in Sri Lanka.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, educational attainment tends to be higher in the small island nations, with attainment rates for lower secondary education as high as 90% in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. This is the case for less than 60% of the adult population in most other countries in the region.
• Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia have reached high levels of educational attainment at the primary and secondary levels: 4 out of 5 adults have completed lower secondary education.
The UIS Data Centre includes key monitoring indicators for the 2010 school year for more than 90 countries, as well as data for about 10 countries for 2011. Indicators on education finance are also available for more than 40 countries.
In addition, the education database, including historical time series, has been updated based on the newly released United Nations population estimates (2010). It is important to note that these updates can lead to significant variations in population-based indicators, such as enrolment rates.
To consult the new data, readers can build their own custom tables in the UIS Data Centre. To build a statistical table with data for 2010, the following steps are suggested:
- select all countries
- select data items
- select 2010 and generate table.
The UIS will release data for the 2010 school year for more countries in January 2012 via the Data Centre. The reference data set for the 2010 school year will be released in May 2012.