The ultimate objective of SDG 4 is that all children and youth do not just enroll in school but stay the course and complete upper secondary education. This is despite the fact that, in many countries, education is only free and compulsory up to lower secondary education at most.
The world is not even on track to achieve universal primary completion by the deadline, let alone upper secondary completion. On current trends, fewer than two in three young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030. In fact, the 2026 GEM Report calculated that the world will only achieve 95% upper secondary completion in 2105.
Which regions have improved their completion rates the fastest?
Globally, between 2000 and 2024, primary completion increased from 77% to 88%, lower secondary completion from 60% to 78%, and upper secondary completion from 37% to 61%.
Progress was faster in some regions than in others. For example, at the primary level, Central and Southern Asia (in purple), which was the closest to sub-Saharan Africa (in dark blue) in completion rates in 1990, shot up dramatically over 20 years. It also closed the 18-percentage-point gap that separated it from Northern Africa and Western Asia (in green) in 1990.
Completion rate, by education level and region, 1990–2004
Meanwhile, the growth of the upper secondary completion rate in Eastern and South-eastern Asia (in red), primarily as a result of progress in China, is perhaps the most spectacular education expansion story of this generation. Completion rates in the region expanded by 1.7 percentage points per year in this period, twice as fast as Latin America and the Caribbean (light blue) and Northern Africa and Western Asia.
And countries?
Behind these averages, country trajectories have also taken a variety of different turns, some of which we captured in the country case studies examined in the 2026 GEM Report. Albania doubled its secondary completion rates in 20 years, for instance. Cambodia increased primary completion rates at the almost constant rate of 1.5 percentage points per year over 30 years, converging towards the global average.
Low-income countries have also followed a variety of trajectories with some countries slowing down after 2015, such as Mali, and others continuing at the same pace, such as Rwanda. Overall, there is less evidence of a slowdown in completion than in out-of-school rates.
Many are completing late
The indicator refers to children who may complete an education level up to 3 or 5 years later than the official graduation age; this can be defined as timely completion. But many children complete even later than that because of late entry or repetition; this can be defined as ultimate completion.
In Angola, for example, there is a nearly 20-percentage-point gap between timely and ultimate completion at the primary level. In Guinea-Bissau and Liberia, there is around a 30-point gap. This phenomenon is quite general, although it is not observed, for example, in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
A fair way to assess progress is to group countries that started from the same level in 2000. For example, in 2000, Angola and Comoros both had lower secondary completion rates of 24%. Angola improved to 42%, but Comoros to 63%.
Papua New Guinea and Nepal can be compared in the same way. Both started at 27% in 2000, but Papua New Guinea reached 36% and Nepal 81%.
Among upper-middle-income countries, apart from China that has expanded at the pace of 2.5 percentage points per year since 2000, Albania, Ecuador, Fiji, Iraq and Türkiye expanded by at least 1.5 percentage points per year. Portugal is the only high-income country to achieve a similar rate. The achievements of these countries raise interesting questions about national and global prospects for achieving universal upper secondary completion.
Transition moments are key moments when students can drop out
A key moment when students are lost from the system is when they transition from one education level to the next. The UIS database only reports data on transition rates up to 2017 but such data provide useful insights.
Globally, between 1985 and 2000, the transition rate between primary and lower secondary education improved from 78% to 88%. Progress slowed down considerably in the following 15 years, reaching only 91% by 2015. In low-income countries, meanwhile, the transition rate improved consistently until 2007 but then plateaued over the next 10 years. But the United Republic of Tanzania eased its historically stringent constraints in access to secondary education and saw transition rates jump from just 20% in 2000 to 71% in 2017.
Some countries, as the 2026 GEM Report case studies showed, indicate that rapid progress is possible, but far too many students are still lost at key transition points. Reaching SDG 4 will require countries to learn from the fastest improvers and remove the financial, institutional and social barriers that prevent children from staying the course.
