Life is beautiful for Ethan, the eight years’ old child living in the Netherlands with caring parents, he is enrolled in primary in one of the most prestigious schools of the country; but unfortunately, things are not the same for Alexander, who is living in Rwanda. He was supposed to be attending school like all children of his age, but due to his parents’ bad living conditions and poverty, he was forced to drop out of school and work hard to provide food for his family. This is the hard truth that many children around the world are facing. Children should be treated equally no matter how hard their living conditions are. Thus, extreme measures should be taken to provide inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

Let’s investigate some insights related to the Sustainable Development Goal 4 Quality Education, which aims to: ENSURE INCLUSIVE AND EQUITABLE QUALITY EDUCATION AND PROMOTE LIFELONG LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL. All visualizations were created using the World Development Index Dataset.

If we take a look at primary and lower secondary completion rates since 1990, we notice that a worldwide improvement has been made in the rates of students attending schools; but unfortunately the Sub-Saharan Africa is still behind, despite a slight increase in the attendance rates since 1990.

A closer look at the number of out of school children around the world between 1990 and 2019 shows that despite the decrease in numbers, over half of the total number of out of school children reside in the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Let’s investigate deeper the enrolment opportunities in preprimary and tertiary between low income, lower middle income, upper middle income and high income countries. We notice that although enrolment has increased within each category, children don’t have equal enrolment opportunities. Low income countries still have enrolment rates that are extremely lower than lower middle, upper middle and high come countries.

Teacher proficiency is the most important indicator to assess student learning, and unfortunately the % of trained teachers has decreased since 2000 and is still far behind in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poverty is one of the main reasons why children are obliged to leave school to work and provide for their families. We notice that the average poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day is the higher in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and East Asia & Pacific where the highest numbers of deprived children from accessing education are reported.

Lack of financial resources in developing countries is definitely one of the main reasons why many children are not accessing their right to study, many countries like those in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are not able to provide the appropriate funds per student in order to ensure access to education.

Parents definitely have a huge impact on the well-being and success of their children, if parents are not educated, they will not be able to improve their own lives and the lives of their children. Parents’ illiteracy and unemployment would definitely increase the risk of having children dropping out of schools at a very young age in order to work and provide support to their families.

Ultimately, Improving education and quality education is a must, especially in developing countries. Children should learn and they should learn sufficiently. The main goal is not only limited to increasing the number of children attending schools but it goes further to assure that the whole educational system is improved to provide quality education to students.