Merger of huebler.info and huebler.blogspot.com

As announced in January, the huebler.info website was shut down in June 2012. As of 21 June, all requests for pages at huebler.info are redirected to huebler.blogspot.com.

huebler.info was mainly a mirror of articles posted on the International Education Statistics blog and nearly all content from the old huebler.info site is available at huebler.blogspot.com. Please use the blog search in the right sidebar, under "Search this site", or the blog archive to find content from the old site. The most popular pages from huebler.info, identified through access statistics collected between January and June 2012, are listed below with the corresponding huebler.blogspot.com URL.

Please replace any huebler.info links in your bookmarks and on your website by the corresponding huebler.blogspot.com links. If you are unable to find content from huebler.info with the blog search, blog archive or the list below, you can contact the author by email at fhuebler@gmail.com. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by the shutdown of the old site.

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Friedrich Huebler, 21 June 2012, Creative Commons License
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Adult and youth literacy in 2010

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) released new literacy data in April 2012, with updated estimates of adult and youth literacy. In 2010, the latest year with data, 84% of the global population 15 years and older were estimated to be able to read and write (see Table 1). At the regional level, literacy rates are highest in Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. In these regions at least 9 out of 10 adults are literate. Literacy rates can be assumed to be as high in North America and Western Europe but not enough countries in that region collect literacy data to allow the calculation of a regional average. By contrast, adult literacy rates are significantly lower in the Arab States (75%), and in South and West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (63% in both regions). Women are considerably less likely to be literate than men in the Arab States, East Asia and the Pacific, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Globally, the female adult literacy rate was estimated to be 80% in 2010, compared to a literacy rate of 89% for men. As a consequence, nearly two thirds (497 million) of the adult illiterate population in 2010 (775 million) were women.

Table 1: Adult and youth literacy rate, 2010
Region Adult literacy rate (%) Youth literacy rate (%)
Total Male Female Total Male Female
Arab States 74.7 83.3 65.7 89.1 92.4 85.6
Central Asia 99.5 99.6 99.4 99.7 99.6 99.8
Central and Eastern Europe 97.9 99.0 97.0 99.1 99.3 98.9
East Asia and the Pacific 94.2 96.7 91.6 98.8 98.9 98.7
Latin America and the Caribbean 91.4 92.1 90.7 97.2 97.0 97.4
North America and Western Europe - - - - - -
South and West Asia 62.7 74.0 51.8 80.5 86.6 74.7
Sub-Saharan Africa 62.6 71.0 54.2 71.8 76.4 66.8
World 84.1 88.6 79.7 89.6 92.2 87.1
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, April 2012

The disparities between regions with high and low literacy rates are readily apparent from the map in Figure 1, which displays the average literacy rate in the seven Education for All (EFA) regions with data listed in Table 1. For a description of the regional groupings, please refer to a past article about the EFA regions on this website.

Figure 1: Regional adult literacy rate, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, April 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

Youth literacy rates, for the population 15 to 24 years of age, are higher than adult literacy rates in all regions as a result of improved access to education among younger generations. Globally, 90% of all youth are able to read and write. Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean have reached or are approaching universal literacy among their young population. The same can be assumed for North America and Western Europe, but no regional average is available from the UIS (see Table 1 and Figure 2). The disparity in literacy rates between men and women is generally smaller among the population 15 to 24 years than among the population 15 years and older. Yet, in the Arab States, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, young women remain less likely to be able to read and write than young men. The global youth literacy rate in 2010 was 92% for men and 87% for women.

Figure 2: Regional youth literacy rate, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, April 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

The regional averages can conceal large differences between countries within a region. This is particularly true for the adult literacy rate in the Arab States, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 3). In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the adult literacy rate is below 30% in Burkina Faso and Niger - the countries with the least literate population worldwide - and above 90% in Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, and Zimbabwe.

Figure 3: Adult literacy rate, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, April 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

Disparities between countries within a region can also be observed for the youth literacy rate, but to a lesser degree than for the adult literacy rate (see Figure 4). Similar to the adult literacy rate, the greatest disparities exist in sub-Saharan Africa, where youth literacy rates range from 37% in Niger to 99% in the Seychelles and Zimbabwe.

Figure 4: Youth literacy rate, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, April 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

To make it easier to explore its literacy data, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics has created an interactive visualization that combines a map showing adult and youth literacy rates, a graph with literacy rates by sex, and a scatter plot with the correlation between GDP per capita and literacy. A screenshot of the visualization is shown in Figure 5. The full visualization is available on the website of the UIS. Literacy data are also contained in the recently published World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education by UNESCO.

Figure 5: UIS data visualization with adult and youth literacy rate, 2010

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, May 2012. - Click image to enlarge.

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Friedrich Huebler, 31 May 2012 (edited 1 June 2012), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/05/literacy.html
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School attendance among 5- to 24-year-olds in Liberia

An article that was published on this site in July 2011, "School attendance by grade and age in Liberia", shows that overage school attendance is very common in Liberia, mainly due to late entry into the education system. The official primary school age in Liberia is 6 to 11 years according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Yet, an analysis of data from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) from 2007 demonstrates that the vast majority of pupils in primary and secondary school in Liberia are older than the theoretical age for their grade. For example, nearly three quarters of all first-graders in Liberia are at least 3 years older than the official entrance age into primary education (see Figure 1). 24% of all first-graders are 5 or 6 years overage, 14% are 7 or 8 years overage, and 5% are 9 or more years overage. Children in the last group start primary school at age 15 or later.

Figure 1: Age distribution of pupils in primary and secondary education in Liberia, 2007
Graph with data on overage and underage pupils in primary and secondary education in Liberia
Source: Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2007. - Click image to enlarge.

Figure 1 shows the age distribution in the 12 grades of primary and secondary education in Liberia. The same DHS data from 2007 can also be analyzed differently, by single year of age instead of by grade. Figure 2 presents the level and grade attended for the population between 5 and 24 years of age. For each age group, the graph shows the percentage in pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The data for primary and secondary education is further divided into single grades, indicated by shades of blue for the 6 primary grades and shades of green for the 6 secondary grades. In addition, Figure 2 shows how many percent are out of school and for how many percent the level and grade of education attended is missing.

Figure 2: Level and grade of education attended by population 5-24 years in Liberia, 2007
Graph with data on school attendance by age in Liberia
Source: Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2007. - Click image to enlarge.

One surprising finding is the large percentage of children between 5 and 14 years who are in pre-primary education. About half of all 5- to 8-year-olds, 39% of all 9-year-olds, and 28% of all 10-year-olds are in pre-primary education. Even at age 14, nearly 7% are still in preschool. One possible explanation is that parents keep their children in pre-primary education due to lack of access to primary education.

Some children start attending primary education at age 5 or 6 but most children enter late. Even among persons 20 years or older, some are still in the first primary grade. School attendance overall reaches a peak at age 14, when more than 86% are in school, mostly in primary education. Primary school attendance rates are highest among 12- to 15-year-olds; two out of three children in this age group are in primary education. Secondary school attendance reaches a peak at age 19, when 38% are in secondary education; in addition, at least 30% of all 17- and 18-year-olds are in secondary education. Attendance rates for tertiary education are low and do not exceed 2% until age 24, when 4% study at a university or other institution of higher learning.

The percentage of the population that is not in any type of formal education decreases from 44% among 5-year-olds to 13% among 14-year-olds. From age 15, out-of-school rates increase again and among 23- and 24-year-olds in Liberia, 61% and 60%, respectively, are not in school. Lastly, for a small percentage of the DHS sample, the grade and level attended was missing.

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Friedrich Huebler, 30 April 2012, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/04/liberia.html
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