Low- and middle-income country scores

This report card examines the current status of girls’ education in 120 countries using official government data on progress (SDG score) and assessment of policy frameworks (policy score) proven to help girls learn and lead.

The heat map below provides a visual representation of country scores. Green shading indicates a higher average score across SDG 4 benchmark and policy indicators, while orange shading represents a lower average score.

Low- and middle-income country scores

Our Recommenda­tions

Leaders of low- and middle-income countries should:

  • Adopt and implement policies that have been proven to improve girls’ opportunities for the future
  • Recommit to spending 20% of budgets and 6% of gross domestic product (GDP) on education
  • Redouble efforts to reach low-income and marginalised girls

Leaders of all countries should:

  • Extend the right to education to include one year of pre-primary education, in addition to 12 years of school
  • Ensure education is a force for gender equality
  • Revise curriculums so that girls gain the knowledge and skills to cope with and address 21st century challenges
  • Make education systems resilient to the impacts of shocks
  • Collect and increase the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable gender-disaggregated data
  • Leverage the National SDG 4 Benchmark process to adopt further benchmark values on gender targets