[1] Education plays a crucial role in achieving all Millennium Development Goals, as it equips future generations with the necessary tools to combat poverty and prevent diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS.
The report indicated that as of 2015, approximately 58 million children of primary school age worldwide were not receiving formal education.
[2] Since 1999, there has been great progress towards achieving universal primary enrollment due in large part to a pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA).
[3] Greater than half of countries and regions worldwide have a net enrolment rate of more than 95% and either already have or are close to achieving universal primary education.
West and Central Africa is home to one-third of all primary school-age out-of-school children, making it the region with the lowest rates of school participation.
Challenges to achieving universal primary education are exacerbated in unstable regions, as they have greater difficulty in accessing financial support.
[5] The barriers which prevent children around the world from obtaining primary-level education are diverse and require tailored responses.
For example, in high-altitude areas of India, poor weather conditions for more than 7 months of the year make school attendance erratic and force children to remain at home (Postiglione).
In these remote areas, lack of funds contributes to low attendance rates by creating undesirable and unsafe learning environments.
It is generally believed that girls are often discouraged from attending primary schooling especially in less developed countries for religious and cultural reasons but there is little evidence available to support this assumption.
When jobs are scarce and parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, education often becomes a lower priority.
According to Mehrotra (1988): In a situation where the parents are illiterate, if the medium of instruction in school is a language that is not spoken at home then the problems of learning in an environment characterized by poverty are compounded and the chances of drop-out increase correspondingly.
In countries with solid education system in place, there are lower crime rates, greater economic growth and improved social services.
The World Bank defines school feeding programs as a targeted social safety place that provides educational and health benefits to vulnerable children, aiming to increase attendance rates, decrease absenteeism and improve nutrition at the household level.
It brings together major NGOs and Teachers Unions in over 120 countries to work in solidarity towards their vision of universal primary education.
To ensure continued relevance and engagement with activists and the academic community, the Project also undertakes comparative research to advance an understanding of the right to education.
Oxfam works on a grassroots level in countries around the world to ensure that all people have access to the basic human rights including education.
They are running a campaign entitled "Rewrite the Future" to encourage American citizens in position of power and wealth to take action against the injustices in education system around the world.
Child Aid conducts school and library based reading programs in over 50 indigenous villages in Guatemala where literacy rates are lower than anywhere in Latin America.
Through its literacy development programing, it helps teachers and librarians create and improve community libraries and deliver ten thousand of children's books annually.
It was designed as a major initiative to help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2015.
It was endorsed by the Development Committee of the World Bank as a process that would provide quick and incremental technical and financial support to countries that have policies but are not on track to attain Universal Primary Education by 2015.