Finishing school – A Right for Children’s Development: A Joint Effort. Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children. Executive Summary

Executive Summary of the report in Spanish “Completar la escuela: Un derecho para crecer, un deber para compartir” (Finishing School. A Right for Children´s Development: A Joint Effort), which is part of the Global Initiative on Out-of School Children promoted by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) through the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). Main findings of the report indicate that in Latin America and the Caribbean there are approximately 117 million children and adolescents in preschool, primary and basic secondary education age groups. However, 6.5 million of them do not attend school and 15.6 million either enter school one or two years behind the normal age for their school grade or repeat grades. The report further stresses that boys, girls and adolescents with disabilities or living in rural areas or either indigenous and Afro-descendants are at greater risk of exclusion or grade repetition. The data analyzed showed that in some countries less than 50% of the secondary school-age population in rural areas is attending school. There is also a clear link between child labour and school attendance – students aged between 12 and 14 years who work showed lower rates of attendance than those who do not work. Furthermore, in some countries, Afro-descendant boys and girls find themselves facing late entry or educational failure more frequently