Every child deserves
A good education
The chance to learn can change a child’s life
Every child has the right to an education – whatever their background, gender or ethnicity. Unicef wants to see a world where all children enjoy this right.
Unicef supports innovative programmes that give the most vulnerable children the chance to learn. We help governments, communities and parents to ensure every child gets a compulsory, free, quality education – even during a conflict or natural disaster.
Every year we help millions of children get an education – for example by providing textbooks and classroom kits, or by setting up child-friendly spaces to learn in disaster zones.
WE’RE HELPING CHILDREN TO LEARN
In 2015, Unicef supplied 55,293 education kits to classrooms all over the world. Kits are tailored to each specific country.
But still, millions of children miss out
Every day, more than 59 million children don’t attend their primary schools. Without an education, children can’t learn, play or develop, and they’re more likely to be trapped in cycles of poverty, disease and forced labour – often in dangerous environments.
Vulnerable children – poor children, ethnic minorities, or disabled – are much more likely to miss out. And most of those vulnerable children are girls.
Conflicts and disasters can have a devastating impact on education. At a time when children’s lives have been turned upside down, school is even more important because it offers normality and hope. When are schools are destroyed, or occupied by armed forces, children are turned into targets for bombs, exposed to to violence and exploitation.
Even when children do go to primary school, 38 million leave without learning to read, write or do basic maths.
When I'm a big boy and finish school, English and maths will help me to be a doctor.
Modu Umar, 13
Modu is 13. “I felt like crying when I saw other children with uniforms and bags going to school,” he says.
Modu and his family fled Monguno in Nigeria after the town was attacked by Boko Haram. It was too dangerous to stay put, and Modu missed school for several months.
Today there is tentative security in Monguno and displaced families like Modu’s have been able to return. But they still need safe places to stay and many schools have been turned into temporary camps.
Normal school life seemed impossible, but with support from Unicef, four classrooms at Monguno’s Central Primary School reopened and Modu can go to school again.
Unicef helps make sure children not only get an education, but a good education.
We work with governments and communities to remove the barriers which stop children attending school, and to make sure all schools are child-centred, inclusive, safe and healthy places – in other words, child-friendly!
In emergencies, we help to set up temporary schools and child-friendly spaces so that play and learning can continue, and children can be supported to recover from the traumas they have faced.
In 2015, with your help, we provided 1,400 temporary schools for children affected by the earthquake in Nepal, and we provided school supplies for 1 million children inside Syria, as well as helping more than 630,000 children affected by the conflict across the region to go back to school.