Education for all is still a dream

A study says that access to education has increased dramatically over the past century but an estimated 323 million children are still not in school.

Efforts to achieve universal primary education worldwide by 2015 are unlikely to yield results, a new study said on Wednesday.

The study also says that access to education has increased dramatically over the past century but an estimated 323 million children are still not in school.

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Grim figures An estimated 323 million kids are still not in school Students who spendless than 10 years in school may not benefit at al

Conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the study says that the goal of providing high-quality education to all children could be achieved at a reasonable cost with more support from the countries.

"There's no question that it's possible," said David Bloom, one of the authors of the study. In the past century, the number of primary children enrolled in schools has grown from around 40 per cent in all regions to about 86 per cent, butmany areas are lagging behind.

Universal primary education has been the goal of several international initiatives. A 1990 global conference in Thailand set the year 2000 as the target date for universal primary education.When that goal was not met, a global forumin Senegal in 2000 set a new target date of 2015.