At the World Education Forum, May 2015, Ms Jo Bourne, Associate Director for Education, UNICEF chaired a parallel group session on Providing meaningful learning opportunities to out-of-school children. Despite the promises of the Millennium Declaration and Education for All, around the world, one child in eleven is still not enrolled in school. This session will provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the profiles of children out of school in different regions of the world and the barriers that they face, drawing on recent analyses conducted under the Out of School Children Initiative (OOSCI). A panel of expert speakers will explore the changes that are needed in countries that have large out-of-school populations as well as examples of effective approaches in countries that are ‘in the final mile’. The session will conclude with descriptions of alternative learning programmes that have been shown to meet the needs of children and adolescents who either have little prospect of going to school or who have already dropped out of education.
