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Global Education Facts

Education is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and lays a foundation for sustained economic growth Public spending on education worldwide today is nearly $5.5 trillion based on UNESCO's Institute for Statistics

Investment of national resources shares in education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics):
- North America and Western Europe - 5.6% of GDP
- Arab States - 4.9%
- Sub-Saharan Africa - 4.5%
- Latin America, Caribbean - 4.4%
- Central and Eastern Europe - 4.2%
- Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific - 2.8%

Total Annual Spending on Education by Country:
- U.S. - $809.6 billion
- Japan - $160.5 billion
- Germany - $129.8 billion
- U.K. - $122.5 billion
- France - $121 billion
- Brazil - $114 billion

Annual Spending Per School-Aged Child:
- U.S. - $7.7 billion
- U.K. - $5.8 billion
- Australia - $5.76 billion
- Canada - $5.74 billion
- Finland - $5.6 billion

Literacy Rate:
- Finland - 100%
- Russia - 99.4%
- U.S, U.K., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan - 99%

Out of School Youth:
- 101 million children worldwide are out of school, majority are girls according to care.org
- As much as 115 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school
- More than 226 million children do not attend secondary school
- 1 in 5 adults or 862 million in developing world cannot read or write
- More illiterate persons are female with more than 70% of them in more than 20 developing nations

U.S. INFO
- Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance Report:
- U.S. students not able to catch up with their foreign peers
- Students in Latvia, Chile and Brazil making gains in academics three times faster than American students
- Students in Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Colombia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Slovenia making gains twice the rate

Global Math and Science ranking (2009 Programme for International Student Assessment):
- U.S. ranks 31st in global Mathematics ranking
- U.S. ranks 23rd in global Science ranking
- China, Japan, Australia and Germany are consistent as the Top 4 in both Math and Science

High school graduation rate:
- Germany is number 1 at 97%
- Japan is 2nd at 93%
- Great Britain is 3rd at 91%
- U.S. ranks 7th at 77%

College graduation rate:
- Central and Eastern Europe - 72.9%
- North America and Western Europe - 62.1%
- Latin America and the Caribbean - 54.3%
- East Asia and the Pacific - 53%
- Arab states - 45%
- South and West Asia - 17%

Population with post-secondary education:
- Japan is number 1 at 44%
- U.S. is 2nd at 41%
- Great Britain is 3rd at 37%
- Australia is 4th at 37%

Stats on K-12 Public Education in the U.S. (The Broad Foundation Education):
- 70% of 8th graders can't read proficiently and most will never catch up
- 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year
- 44% of dropouts under 24 are jobless

Dropout rate in the U.S.:
- National rate - 28%
- Nearly 1.3 million students are not graduating each year

Demographics of dropouts:
- American Indians - 46%
- Black - 43%
- Hispanic - 42%
- White - 22%
- Asian - 17%

7 Signs U.S. Education Decline Jeopardizing National Security (2012 Council on Foreign Relations Report):
- U.S. students remain poorly prepared to compete with global peers despite huge investment in K-12 public education
- More than 25% of U.S. students fail to graduate in high school in 4 years
- Only 25% of U.S. students are proficient or better in civics based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
- 8 in 10 Americans only speak English with no foreign language capability at all
- Only 22% of U.S. high school students met "college ready" standards in all of their core subjects based on ACT report
- Major U.S. employers cannot find qualified American applicant to fill their job openings
- 75% of U.S. citizens aged 17-24 cannot pass military entrance exams due to various factors including lack of critical skills

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