Quality Education
Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This goal emphasizes the importance of providing free primary and secondary education for all children, as well as equal access to vocational training, and affordable higher education.
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Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This goal focuses on ensuring that all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. It also seeks to ensure that all children have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education to prepare them for primary education.
The goal emphasizes equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university. It calls for a substantial increase in the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
Since 2000, there has been significant progress towards universal primary education. By 2015, the total enrollment rate in developing regions reached 91 percent, and the worldwide number of children out of school had dropped by almost half. Literacy rates have increased dramatically, and more girls are in school than ever before. These are remarkable successes, but challenges remain.
Progress has been difficult in some developing regions due to high levels of poverty, armed conflicts, and other emergencies. In Western Asia and North Africa, ongoing armed conflicts have increased the number of children out of school, a worrying trend. While Sub-Saharan Africa has made the greatest progress in primary school enrollment among all developing regions—from 52 percent in 1990 to 78 percent in 2012—large disparities still exist. Children from the poorest households are up to four times more likely to be out of school than those from the richest households. Disparities between rural and urban areas also remain high.
Achieving inclusive and quality education for all reaffirms the belief that education is one of the most powerful and proven vehicles for sustainable development. This goal aims to ensure that all girls and boys complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030. It also aims to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.