World leaders have promised that all children will have the chance to go to school by 2015.

Here are some key facts on progress to date:

1. We are now 7 years from the target date for the Education for All goals and 72 million children remain unable to access primary education, with many millions more forced to drop out of school before they can complete their education.
2. Who you are and where you live decides whether you go to school. Of those children missing an education:
   • 57% are girls
   • One third are children with disabilities
   • Half are children from linguistic minorities or do not speak the same language used in their school
   • Half (36 million) live in countries affected by conflict
   (As you can see the figures don’t add up – that’s because many children fall into more than one of these categories, and so come up against multiple barriers to getting an education)
3. Others are prevented from going to school or face discrimination within schools because of their class, caste, religion, refugee status, because of HIV & AIDS or because they belong to nomadic, indigenous or other marginalised communities. Child labour is known to be a key factor in keeping children out of school: worldwide, 165 million children aged 5-14 yrs are involved in child labour.
4. UNESCO estimates that 18 million new primary teachers will need to be hired before 2015 to meet the universal primary education goal alone.
5. In 2006 the UK government committed £8.5 billion in aid to education by 2015, but in the 2006/07 financial year just £372 million was given out. The government needs to scale up this aid and give out at least £1 billion a year from 2010 onwards to keep its promise.