Bangladesh made large gains in getting young children into classrooms: the share of primary-age children out of school fell from 9.8% in 2010 to 3.4% in 2018. The most recent data show that progress has partly reversed. In 2024, 5.9% of primary-age children, about 918,600, were not enrolled in primary or secondary school.
0.54 million → 0.92 million
Primary-age children out of school, 2018 and 2024.
The series has gaps, with no values for 2019 to 2021, so the path in between is unknown. The next available reading, for 2022, was 7.3% (1.16 million children). It eased to 6.9% (1.09 million) in 2023 and 5.9% in 2024. Despite that improvement, the 2024 rate is still about 2.5 percentage points above the 2018 level, and the number of children out of school is about 375,000 higher.
The indicator counts children of official primary age who are in neither primary nor secondary school; those in pre-primary education are counted as out of school. The figures are UNESCO Institute for Statistics estimates, and the data do not show why the rate rose after 2018 or whether a change in the underlying enrolment or population data contributed. The coincidence of the rise with the later years in the series should not be read as a cause.
For policy, the figures suggest that universal primary enrolment cannot be treated as settled. Reaching the remaining children likely requires household-level data on who is missing, by district, income and disability, so that outreach can be targeted before they fall further behind.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, via World Bank WDI (SE.PRM.UNER, SE.PRM.UNER.ZS).