And nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals needed to look to other sources for daily nutrition. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school. In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, a majority of countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students worldwide. And more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics. Nevertheless, about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 - nearly one fifth of the global population in that age group. Over the past decade, major progress was made towards increasing access to education and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty.
