• Progress in primary education masks considerable disparities: 60% of the out-of-school children are girls; and the gender gap in countries where this is a major problem has not appreciably narrowed. Children of rural areas, urban slums, ethnic minorities and geographically remote communities also in general, registered slower or no progress in access to schooling.

• There are 42 million fewer girls than boys enrolled in primary schools across the world. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have the widest gender gaps.

• Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.

• 855,000,000 people in the world are illiterate; one-sixth of humanity and two-thirds of women.

• Nearly a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names and two-thirds of them are women.

• In the world economy, where defense expenditures total approximately $781 billion a year, the $7 billion more per year needed for education over the next decade remains an unmet challenge for the international community. By spending $7 billion more each year for the next 10 years, (less than the amount people in the United States pay annually for cosmetics and Europeans for ice cream), the dream of educating all children could become a reality

• Only 56 per cent of boys and 44 per cent of girls enroll in primary school in the world's least developed countries

• Aid to developing countries for education from bilateral sources has decreased, e.g. aid from the World Bank has dropped from 1,487 to 880 million.

• The E-9 – the world’s nine high population countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan – continue to account for more than three-quarters of the world’s illiterate population.