Beirut--More than 12 million children in the Middle East are not being educated despite advances in efforts to expand schooling, the UN children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.
The figure does not include children forced from school by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, who would bring the total not receiving an education to 15 million, the agency said in a new report.
The joint report by UNICEF and UN cultural agency UNESCO's Institute for Statistics praises the "considerable resources and political capital" devoted to expanding education in the Middle East over the last decade.
It notes that "out-of-school rates for primary school children have plummeted, often by as much as half."
"But in recent years, progress has stalled," it says, with 4.3 million primary-aged children and 2.9 million lower secondary-aged children out of school.
An additional 5.1 million children are not getting a year of pre-primary school education, bringing the total number of the region's children out of school to 12.3 million, the report says.
That figure represents around 15 percent of the children in the Middle East who should be receiving pre-primary, primary or secondary education.
The report says a study of nine countries in the region revealed a range of reasons that kept children out of school, including poverty.
In many cases, families could not afford costs associated with schooling, including books and uniforms, or the loss of income from a child who could be put to work.
AFP
