What percent of all high school age students attended school at the beginning of the 20th century?
The data and research currently presented here is a preliminary collection or relevant material. We will further develop our work on this topic in the future
(to cover it in the same detail as for example our entry on World Population Growth). If you have expertise in this area and would like to contribute, apply here to join us as a researcher. This entry is concerned with primary and secondary education. Primary school education
today is focussed on establishing the fundamental literacy and numeracy skills of children, as well as developing their understanding of the world. For this reason, primary education is compulsory and provided by the state in almost all countries around the world. The second United Nations Millennium Development Goal was to “ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.” This goal was missed but significant
progress has been made. In 1970, 28% of primary-school-age children in the world were not attending school, today this share has decline to 9% – equivalent to 60 million children not in primary education as the first visualization below shows. How many children are not in primary school?More than half of out-of-school primary children are in Sub-Saharan AfricaThere were 60 million children of primary school age out-of-school in 2014. This number has fallen by 50 million since the late 1990s. In the chart we see the distribution by world region. More than half (57 percent) of primary-aged children not in school were in Sub-Saharan Africa. This was followed by South Asia at 19 percent. The trajectory for Sub-Saharan Africa may look stubbornly flat, but the total number of primary school children out-of-school has fallen by 10 million since the late 1990s. Progress in getting children into school is even more marked when we look at the share of children not in school. As of 2014, 1-in-5 primary aged children in Sub-Saharan Africa were out-of-school. This is unacceptably high. But it’s also a marker of progress: in the mid-1990s 46 percent were not in school — the rate has therefore more than halved within a few decades. We know that positive change is therefore possible. But without accelerated progress we will be far off-track in meeting our target of free, quality education for all by 2030. Enrolment in primary schoolIn this scatter plot you can compare the gross and net enrollment rate in primary education in countries around the world. Enrollment by sexAttendance of primary schoolPrimary School CompletionHow many children are not in primary and secondary school?Enrolment in secondary educationCompletion and attainment of secondary educationThe world map shows the estimates by Barro and Lee on the share of the population with secondary education. Completion rate for secondary educationShown are the estimates for the lower secondary completion rate for both sexes. The UNESCO publishes a very patchy dataset on the share of the population with secondary education. Secondary education enrollment by sexThis chart shows what share of girls among all enrolled secondary education students. With the time-slider it’s possible to explore how the inequality changed over recent decades. Historically, formal education was propagated by religious
institutions as a way of spreading and preserving their traditions as well as training clergy. Although schools and religious institutions existed long before the 19th century, education was not compulsory and, in the majority of cases, costly. What is more, the value of a child’s labour meant that only the richest families could afford to educate their children, a phenomenon that still exists in many developing countries today. The rise of basic schooling over the last 2 centuriesThe chart shows the global development of attainment of at least some basic education. The estimates from the OECD and the IIASA institute show for the global population older than 15 years the share that has not received any formal education. In 1820 this was the huge majority of the world: More than 4 out 5 people alive then had not received any formal education. Over the last 2 centuries this turned around completely and today fewer than 1 out of 5 have received no education at all. The rise of basic schooling since the 19th centuryThe earliest universal primary education system was established in Prussia by Frederick William in 1717.1 It was greatly expanded during the first half of the 19th Century and later copied by other European nations and the US. While many countries followed suit during the 20th century, others have been much slower at adopting the model of universal education. India only passed laws introducing universal, free and compulsory education in 2009. There also still remain a handful countries that do not have laws making attendance mandatory. Private vs public educational institutionsFuture projections of educationCurrent projections predict that the proportion of people receiving no education at all will converge to zero. By 2050, only five countries are predicted to have a rate of no education above 20%: these are Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali and Niger. Primary Education and GrowthThe economics literature has long studied whether the level of education in a country is a determinant of economic growth. Indeed, a number of studies have found that education in the form of cognitive skills –rather than mere school attainment– matters for predicting individual earnings and economic growth. You can read more about this in our related post here.3 His argument rests on the observation that “in the United States and Germany [the] development of widespread formal schooling preceded the onset of modern economic growth.” Furthermore, Easterlin argues that mass (primary) schooling of a “secular and rationalistic type” is the most conducive to economic growth and not simply just education of the elite:
Easterlin suggests that the focus on educating the elite at the expense of the masses in the Ottoman Empire may have contributed to its decline. He also points out that while Spain had relatively high levels of primary education, it was tightly controlled by the Catholic Church and did not teach science, mathematics or other subjects that constitute a modern elementary education. For this reason, by 1900 almost two-thirds of Spain’s population remained illiterate Primary School Enrollment Rate (per 10,000 population) by Country, 1830-1975 – Easterlin (1981)4 Religion, Schooling and GrowthThe debate surrounding the link between religion and growth has an interesting history. Max Weber writing in the early 20th Century argued that it was the protestant work ethic that fostered the spirit of capitalism. However, recent empirical tests of this theory have rejected it. They conclude that while economic performance was indeed higher in protestant regions, so too was literacy, which explains the gap in economic performance. In particular, “protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity.” For more information on literacy, click here. Returns to EducationCross-country estimates of the return to education have found that the highest returns come from primary schooling. The most comprehensive work by George Psacharopoulos finds that the rate of return on primary education to an individual is 26.6%, highlighting the enormous benefits of basic education.6 However, disaggregating the results reveals that for less developed countries this is broadly true, but that in the developed world, the returns to higher education tend to be greater than for primary education.7 This pattern could be explained by the heterogeneous labour market conditions around the world, in particular, the supply of skilled and unskilled labour. For more information on the returns to education, click here. DefinitionsEnrollment definitionsThere exist several ways of measuring enrollment in school:
In countries where many children enter school later (or repeat grades) the GER can exceed 100%, whereas the NER cannot exceed 100%. Data SourcesUNESCO Institute of Statistics
World Bank EdStats
Barro-Lee educational attainment dataset
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
OECD: How Was Life? Global Well-being since 1820
Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC)
What percentage of children attended school in 1900?In 1900, 78 percent of all American children between the ages of five and seventeen were enrolled in schools; by 1910, that percentage had increased only slightly, to 79 percent. The amount of time the average student spent in school was much less than it is for students today.
How many American students attended high school in 1914?In 1914, approximately 1 million Americans attended high school. By 1926, that number had increased to nearly 4 million high school students due to increased funding and higher standards for jobs.
What was school like in the 1900s in America?Education in the 1900's
Public schools were free, and mostly children that were not rich attended this school. Boys and girls were at the same school, and there was a class for each grade level that had around 20-30 kids in each class. The teachers were definitely harder on public school kids than they were private.
Who attended college in the early 1900s?A university education was almost exclusively limited to white males from the upper classes. Nevertheless, women and minorities did make some inroads in higher education during the decade. Women made up 35 percent of college undergraduates in 1900 and 39 percent by 1910.
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