All countries have pledged to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005. This was agreed at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, a year when a significant major8ity of the 104 million children not in primary school were girls and almost two-thirds of the 860 million non-literate people were women.

This edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report paints a picture of where countries stand in their efforts to achieve these goals, highlights innovative and best practice, suggests priorities for national strategies and looks at how the international community is meeting its commitments towards EFA.