There are 124 million children worldwide that have either never started school or dropped out, according to the Global Partnership for Education. 

CCTV America’s Asieh Namdar reports.

The highest rates of out of school children are in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 30 million children who should be in primary school are not.

Many times, families choose to send their boys to school and keep girls home to work, or sending them off into marriage.

GIF: How the rate of children not in school has changed across the globe since 1970

Map images: UNESCO. 

In Sierra Leone, the government is now paying the tuition for tens of thousands of girls. And that appears to be paying off.

Similar efforts are underway in Cote d’Ivoire. In the past five years, the government has opened more than 150 new schools, aiming to move children from cocoa plantations into classrooms.

Photo from UNESCO

For more information from UNESCO, please check here.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on education issues

For many, there isn’t a more important issue than childhood education.

CCTV America’s Karina Huber spoke to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about this. He’s now a United Nations Special Envoy for Education.

This statistic shows the number of children who were out of school in their primary school age in several regions across the world in 2011. In 2011, about 32 million children of primary school age were out of school in Sub-Saharan Africa.