educational problems

The alarming state of the American student in 2022

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, robin lake and robin lake director, center on reinventing public education - arizona state university travis pillow travis pillow innovation fellow, center on reinventing public education - arizona state university.

November 1, 2022

The pandemic was a wrecking ball for U.S. public education, bringing months of school closures, frantic moves to remote instruction, and trauma and isolation.

Kids may be back at school after three disrupted years, but a return to classrooms has not brought a return to normal. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed historic declines in American students’ knowledge and skills and widening gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students.

But even these sobering results do not tell us the whole story.

After nearly three years of tracking pandemic response by U.S. school systems and synthesizing knowledge about the impacts on students, we sought to establish a baseline understanding of the contours of the crisis: What happened and why, and where do we go from here?

This first annual “ State of the American Student ” report synthesizes nearly three years of research on the academic, mental health, and other impacts of the pandemic and school closures.

It outlines the contours of the crisis American students have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and begins to chart a path to recovery and reinvention for all students—which includes building a new and better approach to public education that ensures an educational crisis of this magnitude cannot happen again.

The state of American students as we emerge from the pandemic is still coming into focus, but here’s what we’ve learned (and haven’t yet learned) about where COVID-19 left us:

1. Students lost critical opportunities to learn and thrive.

• The typical American student lost several months’ worth of learning in language arts and more in mathematics.

• Students suffered crushing increases in anxiety and depression. More than one in 360 U.S. children lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.

• Students poorly served before the pandemic were profoundly left behind during it, including many with disabilities whose parents reported they were cut off from essential school and life services.

This deeply traumatic period threatens to reverberate for decades. The academic, social, and mental-health needs are real, they are measurable, and they must be addressed quickly to avoid long-term consequences to individual students, the future workforce, and society.

2. The average effects from COVID mask dire inequities and widely varied impact.

Some students are catching up, but time is running out for others. Every student experienced the pandemic differently, and there is tremendous variation from student to student, with certain populations—namely, Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, as well as other vulnerable populations—suffering the most severe impacts.

The effects were more severe where campuses stayed closed longer. American students are experiencing a K-shaped recovery, in which gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms. In the latest NAEP results released in September , national average scores fell five times as much in reading, and four times as much in math, for the lowest-scoring 10 percent of nine-year-olds as they had for the highest-scoring 10 percent.

At the pace of recovery we are seeing today, too many students of all races and income levels will graduate in the coming years without the skills and knowledge needed for college and careers.

3. What we know at this point is incomplete. The situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest.

The data and stories we have to date are enough to warrant immediate action, but there are serious holes in our understanding of how the pandemic has affected various groups of students, especially those who are typically most likely to fall through the cracks in the American education system.

We know little about students with complex needs, such as those with disabilities and English learners. We still know too little about the learning impacts in non-tested subjects, such as science, civics, and foreign languages. And while psychologists , educators , and the federal government are sounding alarms about a youth mental health crisis, systematic measures of student wellbeing remain hard to come by.

We must acknowledge that what we know at this point is incomplete, since the pandemic closures and following recovery have been so unprecedented in recent times. It’s possible that as we continue to dig into the evidence on the pandemic’s impacts, some student groups or subjects may have not been so adversely affected. Alternatively, the situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest. Some students are already bouncing back quickly. But for others, the impact could grow worse over time.

In subjects like math, where learning is cumulative, pandemic-related gaps in students’ learning that emerged during the pandemic could affect their ability to grasp future material. In some states, test scores fell dramatically for high schoolers nearing graduation. Shifts in these students’ academic trajectories could affect their college plans—and the rest of their lives. And elevated rates of chronic absenteeism suggest some students who disconnected from school during the pandemic have struggled to reconnect since.

4. The harms students experienced can be traced to a rigid and inequitable system that put adults, not students, first.

• Despite often heroic efforts by caring adults, students and families were cut off from essential support, offered radically diminished learning opportunities, and left to their own devices to support learning.

• Too often, partisan politics, not student needs , drove decision-making.

• Students with complexities and differences too often faced systems immobilized by fear and a commitment to sameness rather than prioritization and problem-solving.

So, what can we do to address the situation we’re in?

Diverse needs demand diverse solutions that are informed by pandemic experiences

Freed from the routines of rigid systems, some parents, communities, and educators found new ways to tailor learning experiences around students’ needs. They discovered learning can happen any time and anywhere. They discovered enriching activities outside class and troves of untapped adult talent.

Some of these breakthroughs happened in public schools—like virtual IEP meetings that leveled power dynamics between administrators and parents advocating for their children’s special education services. Others happened in learning pods or other new environments where families and community groups devised new ways to meet students’ needs. These were exceptions to an otherwise miserable rule, and they can inform the work ahead.

We must act quickly but we must also act differently. Important next steps include:

• Districts and states should immediately use their federal dollars to address the emergent needs of the COVID-19 generation of students via proven interventions, such as well-designed tutoring, extended learning time, credit recovery, additional mental health support, college and career guidance, and mentoring. The challenges ahead are too daunting for schools to shoulder alone. Partnerships and funding for families and community-driven solutions will be critical.

• By the end of the 2022–2023 academic year, states and districts must commit to an honest accounting of rebuilding efforts by defining, adopting, and reporting on their progress toward 5- and 10-year goals for long-term student recovery. States should invest in rigorous studies that document, analyze, and improve their approaches.

• Education leaders and researchers must adopt a national research and development agenda for school reinvention over the next five years. This effort must be anchored in the reality that the needs of students are so varied, so profound, and so multifaceted that a one-size-fits-all approach to education can’t possibly meet them all. Across the country, community organizations who previously operated summer or afterschool programs stepped up to support students during the school day. As they focus on recovery, school system leaders should look to these helpers not as peripheral players in education, but as critical contributors who can provide teaching , tutoring, or joyful learning environments for students and often have trusting relationships with their families.

• Recovery and rebuilding should ensure the system is more resilient and prepared for future crises. That means more thoughtful integration of online learning and stronger partnerships with organizations that support learning outside school walls. Every school system in America should have a plan to keep students safe and learning even when they can’t physically come to school, be equipped to deliver high-quality, individualized pathways for students, and build on practices that show promise.

Our “State of the American Student” report is the first in a series of annual reports the Center on Reinventing Public Education intends to produce through fall of 2027. We hope every state and community will produce similar, annual accounts and begin to define ambitious goals for recovery. The implications of these deeply traumatic years will reverberate for decades unless we find a path not only to normalcy but also to restitution for this generation and future generations of American students.

The road to recovery can lead somewhere new. In five years, we hope to report that out of the ashes of the pandemic, American public education emerged transformed: more flexible and resilient, more individualized and equitable, and—most of all— more joyful.

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The global education crisis – even more severe than previously estimated

Ellinore carroll, joão pedro azevedo, jessica bergmann, matt brossard, gwang- chol chang, borhene chakroun, marie-helene cloutier, suguru mizunoya, nicolas reuge, halsey rogers.

In our recent   The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery report (produced jointly by UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank), we sounded the alarm: this generation of students now risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value, or about 14 percent of today’s global GDP, because of COVID-19-related school closures and economic shocks. This new projection far exceeds the $10 trillion estimate released in 2020 and reveals that the impact of the pandemic is more severe than previously thought . 

The pandemic and school closures not only jeopardized children’s health and safety with domestic violence and child labor increasing, but also impacted student learning substantially. The report indicates that in low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in  Learning Poverty  – already above 50 percent before the pandemic – could reach 70 percent largely as a result of the long school closures and the relative ineffectiveness of remote learning.

Unless action is taken, learning losses may continue to accumulate once children are back in school, endangering future learning.

Figure 1. Countries must accelerate learning recovery

Severe learning losses and worsening inequalities in education

Results from global simulations of the effect of school closures on learning are now being corroborated by country estimates of actual learning losses. Evidence from Brazil , rural Pakistan , rural India , South Africa , and Mexico , among others, shows substantial losses in math and reading. In some low- and middle-income countries, on average, learning losses are roughly proportional to the length of the closures—meaning that each month of school closures led to a full month of learning losses (Figure 1, selected LMICs and HICs presents an average effect of 100% and 43%, respectively), despite the best efforts of decision makers, educators, and families to maintain continuity of learning.

However, the extent of learning loss varies substantially across countries and within countries by subject, students’ socioeconomic status, gender, and age or grade level (Figure 1 illustrates this point, note the large standard deviation, a measure which shows data are spread out far from the mean). For example, results from two states in Mexico show significant learning losses in reading and in math for students aged 10-15. The estimated learning losses were greater in math than reading, and they disproportionately affected younger learners, students from low-income backgrounds, and girls.

Figure 2. The average learning loss standardized by the length of the school closure was close to 100% in Low- and Middle-Income countries, and 43% in High-Income countries, with a standard deviation of 74% and 30%, respectively.

While most countries have yet to measure learning losses, data from several countries, combined with more extensive evidence on unequal access to remote learning and at-home support, shows the crisis has exacerbated inequalities in education globally.

• Children from low-income households, children with disabilities, and girls were less likely to access remote learning due to limited availability of electricity, connectivity, devices, accessible technologies as well as discrimination and social and gender norms.
• Younger students had less access to age-appropriate remote learning and were more affected by learning loss than older students. Pre-school-age children, who are at a pivotal stage for learning and development, faced a double disadvantage as they were often left out of remote learning and school reopening plans.
• Learning losses were greater for students of lower socioeconomic status in various countries, including Ghana , Mexico , and Pakistan .
• While the gendered impact of school closures on learning is still emerging, initial evidence points to larger learning losses among girls, including in South Africa and Mexico .

As a result, these children risk missing out on much of the boost that schools and learning can provide to their well-being and life chances. The learning recovery response must therefore target support to those that need it most, to prevent growing inequalities in education.

Beyond learning, growing evidence shows the negative effects school closures have had on students’ mental health and well-being, health and nutrition, and protection, reinforcing the vital role schools play in providing comprehensive support and services to students.

Critical and Urgent Need to Focus on Learning Recovery

How should decision makers and the international community respond to the growing global education crisis?

Reopening schools and keeping them open must be the top priority, globally. While nearly every country in the world offered remote learning opportunities for students, the quality and reach of such initiatives varied, and in most cases, they offered a poor substitute for in-person instruction. Stemming and reversing learning losses, especially for the most vulnerable students, requires in-person schooling. Decision makers need to reassure parents and caregivers that with adequate safety measures, such as social distancing, masking, and improved ventilation, global evidence shows that children can resume in-person schooling safely.

But just reopening schools with a business-as-usual approach won’t reverse learning losses. Countries need to create Learning Recovery Programs . Three lines of action will be crucial:

• Consolidating the curriculum – to help teachers prioritize essential material that students have missed while out of school, even if the content is usually covered in earlier grades, to ensure the curriculum is aligned to students’ learning levels. As an example, Tanzania consolidated its curriculum for grade 1 and 2 in 2015, reducing the number of subjects taught and increasing time on ensuring the acquisition of foundational numeracy and literacy.
• Extending instructional time – by extending the school day, modifying the academic calendar to make the school year longer, or by offering summer school for all students or those in need. In Mexico , the Ministry of Public Education announced planned extensions to the academic calendar to help recovery. In Madagascar , the government scaled up an existing two-month summer “catch-up” program for students who reintegrate into school after having left the system.
• Improving the efficiency of learning – by supporting teachers to apply structured pedagogy and targeted instruction. A structured pedagogy intervention in Kenya using teachers guides with lesson plans has proven to be highly effective. Targeted instruction, or aligning instruction to students’ learning level, has been successfully implemented at scale in Cote D’Ivoire .

Finally, the report emphasizes the need for adequate funding. As of June 2021, the education and training sector had been allocated less than 3 percent of global stimulus packages. Much more funding will be needed for immediate learning recovery if countries are to avert the long-term damage to productivity and inclusion that they now face.

Learning Recovery as a Springboard to an Accelerated Learning Trajectory

Accelerating learning recovery has benefits that go well beyond short-term gains:  it can give children the necessary foundations for a lifetime of learning, and it can help countries increase the efficiency, equity, and resilience of schooling. This can be achieved if countries build on investments made and lessons learned during the crisis—most notably, with a focus on six areas:

• Assessing student learning so instruction can be targeted to students’ learning levels and specific needs.
• Investing in digital learning opportunities for all students, ensuring that technology is fit for purpose and focused on enhancing human interactions.
• Reinforcing support that leverages the role of parents, families, and communities in children’s learning.
• Ensuring that teachers are supported and have access to practical, high-quality professional development opportunities, teaching guides and learning materials. 
• Increasing the share of education in the national budget allocation of stimulus packages and tying it to investments mentioned above that can accelerate learning.
• Investing in evidence building - in particular, implementation research, to understand what works and how to scale what works to the system level.

It is time to shift from crisis response to learning recovery. We must make sure that investments and actions for learning recovery lay the foundations for more efficient, equitable, and resilient education systems—systems that truly deliver learning and well-being for all children and youth. Only then can we ensure learning continuity in the face of future disruption.

The report was produced as part of the  Mission: Recovering Education 2021 , through which the  World Bank ,  UNESCO , and  UNICEF  are focused on three priorities: bringing all children back to schools, recovering learning losses, and preparing and supporting teachers.

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Ten of the biggest problems facing education

Aug 21, 2024

Many kids in the US head back to school this month. However, 250 million children around the world will be left out of the classroom. Revised for 2024, here are ten of the biggest problems facing education around the world.

Education can help us end poverty. It gives kids the skills they need to survive and thrive, opening the door to jobs, resources, and everything else that they need to live full, creative lives. In fact, UNESCO reports that if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills, an estimated 171 million people could escape the cycle of poverty . And if all adults completed their secondary education, we could cut the global poverty rate by more than half. 

So why are 250 million children around the world currently out of school? We aren’t at a loss for reasons after the last few years. Here are the top ten problems facing education in 2024.

Learn more about how we're helping more people to learn… more

Last year we reached over 1.1 million people with our education programs. Get updates from classrooms around the world with our newsletter.

1. Conflict and violence

Conflict is one of the main reasons that kids are kept out of the classroom, with USAID estimating that half of all children not attending school are living in a conflict zone — some 125 million in total. To get a sense of this as a growing issue, in 2013, UNESCO reported that conflict was keeping 50 million students out of the classroom. Last year alone, 19 million children in Sudan were out of school due to renewed conflict . 

Education is a lifeline during a conflict , protecting children from forced recruitment and potential attacks, while giving them a sense of normalcy in times that are anything but. It’s also a critical element in reducing the chance of future conflicts in certain areas. However, despite international humanitarian law, schools have become targets of attacks in many recent conflicts. Many parents have opted to keep their children at home as a result. However, these are not easy years to make up. According to UNESCO, the first two years of the Syria crisis erased all the country's educational progress since the start of the 21st century. Recovering these missed years also takes more time and effort, with many Syrian children requiring psychosocial care that hinders a "normal" learning curve. Unfortunately, as conflicts become more protracted, they are also threatening to create multiple lost generations.

When conflict meets the classroom: How does war affect education?

The consequences of conflict meeting the classroom.

2. Violence and bullying in the classroom

Violence can also carry over into the classroom. One UN study found that, while 102 countries have banned corporal punishment in schools, that ban isn’t always enforced. Many children have faced sexual violence and bullying in the classroom, either from fellow pupils or faculty and staff. 

Children will often drop out of school altogether to avoid these situations. Even when they stay in school, the violence they experience can affect their social skills and self-esteem. It also has a negative impact on their educational achievement. Concern has addressed this head-on in Sierra Leone with our Safe Learning Model .

3. Climate change

Climate change is another major threat to education . Extreme weather events and related natural disasters destroy schools and other infrastructure key to accessing education (such as roads), and rebuilding damaged classrooms doesn’t happen overnight. 

Climate change also affects children’s health, both physical and emotional, making it hard to keep up with school (and at times making it hard for teachers themselves to focus on delivering a quality education ). With climate change linked so tightly to poverty, it also leads families to withdraw their children from school when they can no longer afford the fees or need their children to contribute to the household income.

Climate change is one of the biggest threats to education — and growing

Education is key to ending climate change — but climate change is also one of the biggest threats to education.

4. Harvest seasons and market days

In agricultural communities, the harvest is both a vital source of food and income. During these periods, children are often required to skip school to help their families harvest and sell crops. Sometimes they'll be out of school for weeks at a stretch. Families who make their living from farming may also have to move around if they have herds that graze, or to harvest crops planted in different areas. This is also disruptive for children and their education.

5. Unpaid and underqualified teachers

When governments are dysfunctional, public servants aren’t paid. That includes teachers. In some countries, teachers aren’t paid for months at a time. Many have no choice but to quit their posts to find other sources of income or are moved to other districts. 

As a result, schools often struggle to find qualified teachers to replace those who have left. But, without qualified teachers in the classrooms, children suffer the most. In sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank estimates that the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 (with no updates yet as to how the pandemic may have affected these numbers). The World Bank adds that teachers in STEM are especially hard to come by in low-income countries.

What does Quality Education mean? Breaking down SDG #4

Breaking down Sustainable Development Goal #4.

6. The cost of supplies and uniforms

Although many countries provide free elementary education, attending school still comes at a cost. Parents and caretakers often pay for mandatory uniforms and other fees. School supplies are also necessary. These costs alone can keep students out of the classroom. 

7. Being an older student

According to UNICEF, adolescents are twice as likely to be out of school compared to younger children. Globally, that means one in five students between the ages of 12 and 15 is out of school. As children get older, they face increased pressure to drop out so that they can work and contribute to their family income. 

One solution we’ve adopted at Concern is to help those who didn't complete their education learn many of the things they missed out on, including financial literacy, business management, and vocational skills. 

8. Being female

In many countries around the world, girls are more likely to be excluded from education than boys . This is despite all the efforts and progress made in recent years to increase the number of girls in school. According to UNESCO, up to 80% of school-aged girls who are currently out of school are unlikely to ever start. For boys, that same figure is just 16%. This rate is highest in emergency situations and fragile contexts.

Many schools have no toilets (let alone separate bathrooms for boys and girls). This usually means more missed days for girls when they get their period: The World Bank estimates that girls around the world miss up to 20% of their school days due to period poverty and stigma .

Girls may also be pressured to drop out of school to help out their family, as we mentioned above with regards to taking a job. However, in many countries where Concern works, they may also be forced out of school to get married. Girls who enter into an early or forced marriage usually leave school to take care of their new families. According to the UN, 33% of girls in low-income countries wed before the age of 18. Just over 11% get married before the age of 15. In most instances, marriage and having children mean the end of a girl’s formal education.

Child marriage and education: The blackboard wins over the bridal altar

For girls, child marriage (aka forced marriage) means the end of an education. Here's how a landmark ruling in Malawi is helping to keep girls in school.

9. Outbreaks and epidemics

We learned this the hard way with COVID-19. Even if the student body is healthy, they may be kept out of school if an epidemic has hit their area. Teachers might get sick, and families with sick parents may need their children to stay home and help out. Quarantines often go into effect. 

The 2014-16 West African Ebola outbreak was a severe problem for education in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone . Ebola put the education of 3 million children in these countries on hold. As a response, we worked with the governments of both countries to deliver lessons by radio. We also trained community members to work with small groups of children on basic reading and math. As schools reopened, we shifted our focus to helping children get back into classrooms safely, but many kids still had a lot of catching up to do. 

10. Language and literacy barriers

Even if a child goes to school in the town where they were born and grew up their entire life, they may face a language barrier in the classroom between their mother tongue and the official lingua franca used in education systems. In Marsabit county, Kenya , the first language for most children is Borana. Once students start school, they must learn two new languages to understand their teachers: Swahili and English. 

UNESCO estimates that 40% of school-aged children don’t have access to education in a language that they understand. This is especially difficult for students who have migrated to a new country, such as Syrian refugee children being hosted in Türkiye: Not only do they have to switch from Levantine Arabic to Turkish, but they also have to learn an entirely new alphabet. 

This dovetails with literacy , another key issue in education. If a student struggles with reading (even in their mother tongue), it can have a ripple effect on their ability to learn in all other subjects. Many students drop out if they feel like they can’t keep up, either due to the quality of the teaching or to a special accommodation they need for their learning that can’t be made.

Concern’s work in education

Concern’s work is grounded in the belief that all children have a right to a quality education. We integrate our education programs into both our development and emergency work to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being. Our focus is on improving access to education, improving the quality of teaching and learning, and fostering safe learning environments

We've brought quality education to villages that are off the grid, engaged local community leaders to find solutions to keep girls in school, and provided mentorship and training for teachers. Last year alone, we reached 1.1 million people with education programs across ten countries.

Learn more about Concern's education programs.

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10 of the biggest problems facing education

Children across the UK are heading back to school in the coming weeks. However, 250 million children around the world will be left out of the classroom. Revised for 2024, here are 10 of the biggest problems facing education around the world.

Education can help us end poverty. It gives kids the skills they need to survive and thrive, opening the door to jobs, resources, and everything else that they need to live full, creative lives. In fact, UNESCO reports that if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills, an estimated 171 million people could escape the  cycle of poverty . And if all adults completed their secondary education, we could cut the global poverty rate by more than half. 

So why are  250 million children around the world currently out of school? We aren’t at a loss for reasons after the last few years. Here are the top 10 problems facing education in 2024. 

1. Conflict and violence

Conflict is one of the main reasons that kids are kept out of the classroom, with USAID estimating that half of all children not attending school are living in a conflict zone — some 125 million in total. To get a sense of this as a growing issue, in 2013, UNESCO  reported that conflict was keeping 50 million students out of the classroom. Last year alone,  19 million children in Sudan were out of school due to renewed conflict. 

Education is a lifeline during a conflict, protecting children from forced recruitment and potential attacks, while giving them a sense of normalcy in times that are anything but. It’s also a critical element in reducing the chance of future conflicts in certain areas. However, despite international humanitarian law, schools have become targets of attacks in many recent conflicts. Many parents have opted to keep their children at home as a result. However, these are not easy years to make up. According to UNESCO, the first two years of  the Syria crisis erased all the country's educational progress since the start of the 21st century. Recovering these missed years also takes more time and effort, with many Syrian children requiring psychosocial care that hinders a "normal" learning curve. Unfortunately, as conflicts become more protracted, they are also threatening to create multiple lost generations. 

2. Violence and bullying in the classroom

Violence can also carry over into the classroom. One UN study found that, while 102 countries have banned corporal punishment in schools, that ban isn’t always enforced. Many children have faced sexual violence and bullying in the classroom, either from fellow pupils or faculty and staff. 

Children will often drop out of school altogether to avoid these situations. Even when they stay in school, the violence they experience can affect their social skills and self-esteem. It also has a negative impact on their educational achievement. Concern has addressed this head-on in Sierra Leone with our  Safe Learning Model .

3. Climate change

Climate change is another major threat to education. Extreme weather events and related natural disasters destroy schools and other infrastructure key to accessing education (such as roads), and rebuilding damaged classrooms doesn’t happen overnight. 

Climate change also affects children’s health, both physical and emotional, making it hard to keep up with school (and at times making it hard for teachers themselves to focus on delivering a quality education). With climate change linked so tightly to poverty, it also leads families to withdraw their children from school when they can no longer afford the fees or need their children to contribute to the household income. 

4. Harvest seasons and market days

In agricultural communities, the harvest is both a vital source of food and income. During these periods, children are often required to skip school to help their families harvest and sell crops. Sometimes they'll be out of school for weeks at a stretch. Families who make their living from farming may also have to move around if they have herds that graze, or to harvest crops planted in different areas. This is also disruptive for children and their education.

5. Unpaid and underqualified teachers

When governments are dysfunctional, public servants aren’t paid. That includes teachers. In some countries, teachers aren’t paid for months at a time. Many have no choice but to quit their posts to find other sources of income or are moved to other districts. 

As a result, schools often struggle to find qualified teachers to replace those who have left. But, without qualified teachers in the classrooms, children suffer the most. In sub-Saharan Africa, the  World Bank estimates that the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 (with no updates yet as to how the pandemic may have affected these numbers). The World Bank adds that teachers in STEM are especially hard to come by in low-income countries. 

6. The cost of supplies and uniforms

Although many countries provide free primary education, attending school still comes at a cost. Parents and caretakers often pay for mandatory uniforms and other fees. School supplies are also necessary. These costs alone can keep students out of the classroom. 

7. Being an older student

According to UNICEF, adolescents are twice as likely to be out of school compared to younger children. Globally, that means one in five students between the ages of 12 and 15 is out of school. As children get older, they face increased pressure to drop out so that they can work and contribute to their family income. 

One solution we’ve adopted at Concern is to help those who didn't complete their education learn many of the things they missed out on, including financial literacy, business management, and vocational skills. 

8. Being female

In many countries around the world, girls are more likely to be excluded from education than boys. This is despite all the efforts and progress made in recent years to increase the number of girls in school. According to UNESCO, up to 80% of school-aged girls who are currently out of school are unlikely to ever start. For boys, that same figure is just 16%. This rate is highest in emergency situations and fragile contexts.

Many schools have no toilets (let alone separate bathrooms for boys and girls). This usually means more missed days for girls when they get their period. The World Bank estimates that girls around the world miss up to 20% of their school days due to period poverty and stigma.

Girls may also be pressured to drop out of school to help out their family, as we mentioned above with regards to taking a job. However, in many countries where Concern works, they may also be forced out of school to get married. Girls who enter into an early or forced marriage usually leave school to take care of their new families. According to the UN, 33% of girls in low-income countries wed before the age of 18. Just over 11% get married before the age of 15. In most instances, marriage and having children mean the end of a girl’s formal education.

9. Outbreaks and epidemics

We learned this the hard way with COVID-19. Even if the student body is healthy, they may be kept out of school if an epidemic has hit their area. Teachers might get sick, and families with sick parents may need their children to stay home and help out. Quarantines often go into effect. 

The 2014-16 West African Ebola outbreak was a severe problem for education in countries like  Liberia and  Sierra Leone . Ebola put the education of 3 million children in these countries on hold. As a response, we worked with the governments of both countries to deliver lessons by radio. We also trained community members to work with small groups of children on basic reading and maths. As schools reopened, we shifted our focus to helping children get back into classrooms safely, but many kids still had a lot of catching up to do. 

10. Language and literacy barriers

Even if a child goes to school in the town where they were born and grew up their entire life, they may face a language barrier in the classroom between their mother tongue and the official lingua franca used in education systems. In Marsabit county,  Kenya , the first language for most children is Borana. Once students start school, they must learn two new languages to understand their teachers: Swahili and English. 

UNESCO estimates that 40% of school-aged children don’t have access to education in a language that they understand. This is especially difficult for students who have migrated to a new country, such as Syrian refugee children being hosted in Türkiye : Not only do they have to switch from Levantine Arabic to Turkish, but they also have to learn an entirely new alphabet. 

This dovetails with literacy, another key issue in education. If a student struggles with reading (even in their mother tongue), it can have a ripple effect on their ability to learn in all other subjects. Many students drop out if they feel like they can’t keep up, either due to the quality of the teaching or to a special accommodation they need for their learning that can’t be made.

Concern's work in education

Concern’s work is grounded in the belief that all children have a right to a quality education. We integrate our education programmes into both our development and emergency work to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being. Our focus is on improving access to education, improving the quality of teaching and learning, and fostering safe learning environments

We've brought quality education to villages that are off the grid, engaged local community leaders to find solutions to keep girls in school, and provided mentorship and training for teachers. Last year alone, we reached 1.1 million people with education programmes across 10 countries.

Learn more about Concern's education programmes.

Problems in education, solved

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Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

How politics and the pandemic put schools in the line of fire

A previous version of this story incorrectly said that 39 percent of American children were on track in math. That is the percentage performing below grade level.

Test scores are down, and violence is up . Parents are screaming at school boards , and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.

For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.

Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.

Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, their curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity and even the contents of their libraries. Republicans — who see education as a winning political issue — are pressing their case for more “parental control,” or the right to second-guess educators’ choices. Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.

“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”

Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education , when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.

Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.

Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.

Teresa Rennie, an eighth-grade math and science teacher in Philadelphia, said in 11 years of teaching, she has never referred this many children to counseling.

“So many students are needy. They have deficits academically. They have deficits socially,” she said. Rennie said that she’s drained, too. “I get 45 minutes of a prep most days, and a lot of times during that time I’m helping a student with an assignment, or a child is crying and I need to comfort them and get them the help they need. Or there’s a problem between two students that I need to work with. There’s just not enough time.”

Many wonder: How deep is the damage?

Learning lost

At the start of the pandemic, experts predicted that students forced into remote school would pay an academic price. They were right.

“The learning losses have been significant thus far and frankly I’m worried that we haven’t stopped sinking,” said Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

Some of the best data come from the nationally administered assessment called i-Ready, which tests students three times a year in reading and math, allowing researchers to compare performance of millions of students against what would be expected absent the pandemic. It found significant declines, especially among the youngest students and particularly in math.

The low point was fall 2020, when all students were coming off a spring of chaotic, universal remote classes. By fall 2021 there were some improvements, but even then, academic performance remained below historic norms.

Take third grade, a pivotal year for learning and one that predicts success going forward. In fall 2021, 38 percent of third-graders were below grade level in reading, compared with 31 percent historically. In math, 39 percent of students were below grade level, vs. 29 percent historically.

Damage was most severe for students from the lowest-income families, who were already performing at lower levels.

A McKinsey & Co. study found schools with majority-Black populations were five months behind pre-pandemic levels, compared with majority-White schools, which were two months behind. Emma Dorn, a researcher at McKinsey, describes a “K-shaped” recovery, where kids from wealthier families are rebounding and those in low-income homes continue to decline.

“Some students are recovering and doing just fine. Other people are not,” she said. “I’m particularly worried there may be a whole cohort of students who are disengaged altogether from the education system.”

A hunt for teachers, and bus drivers

Schools, short-staffed on a good day, had little margin for error as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept over the country this winter and sidelined many teachers. With a severe shortage of substitutes, teachers had to cover other classes during their planning periods, pushing prep work to the evenings. San Francisco schools were so strapped that the superintendent returned to the classroom on four days this school year to cover middle school math and science classes. Classes were sometimes left unmonitored or combined with others into large groups of unglorified study halls.

“The pandemic made an already dire reality even more devastating,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, referring to the shortages.

In 2016, there were 1.06 people hired for every job listing. That figure has steadily dropped, reaching 0.59 hires for each opening last year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. In 2013, there were 557,320 substitute teachers, the BLS reported. In 2020, the number had fallen to 415,510. Virtually every district cites a need for more subs.

It’s led to burnout as teachers try to fill in the gaps.

“The overall feelings of teachers right now are ones of just being exhausted, beaten down and defeated, and just out of gas. Expectations have been piled on educators, even before the pandemic, but nothing is ever removed,” said Jennifer Schlicht, a high school teacher in Olathe, Kan., outside Kansas City.

Research shows the gaps in the number of available educators are most acute in areas including special education and educators who teach English language learners, as well as substitutes. And all school year, districts have been short on bus drivers , who have been doubling up routes, and forcing late school starts and sometimes cancellations for lack of transportation.

Many educators predict that fed-up teachers will probably quit, exacerbating the problem. And they say political attacks add to the burnout. Teachers are under scrutiny over lesson plans, and critics have gone after teachers unions, which for much of the pandemic demanded remote learning.

“It’s just created an environment that people don’t want to be part of anymore,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “People want to take care of kids, not to be accused and punished and criticized.”

Falling enrollment

Traditional public schools educate the vast majority of American children, but enrollment has fallen, a worrisome trend that could have lasting repercussions. Enrollment in traditional public schools fell to less than 49.4 million students in fall 2020 , a 2.7 percent drop from a year earlier .

National data for the current school year is not yet available. But if the trend continues, that will mean less money for public schools as federal and state funding are both contingent on the number of students enrolled. For now, schools have an infusion of federal rescue money that must be spent by 2024.

Some students have shifted to private or charter schools. A rising number , especially Black families , opted for home schooling. And many young children who should have been enrolling in kindergarten delayed school altogether. The question has been: will these students come back?

Some may not. Preliminary data for 19 states compiled by Nat Malkus, of the American Enterprise Institute, found seven states where enrollment dropped in fall 2020 and then dropped even further in 2021. His data show 12 states that saw declines in 2020 but some rebounding in 2021 — though not one of them was back to 2019 enrollment levels.

Joshua Goodman, associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, studied enrollment in Michigan schools and found high-income, White families moved to private schools to get in-person school. Far more common, though, were lower-income Black families shifting to home schooling or other remote options because they were uncomfortable with the health risks of in person.

“Schools were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t,” Goodman said.

At the same time, charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, saw enrollment increase by 7 percent, or nearly 240,000 students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. There’s also been a surge in home schooling. Private schools saw enrollment drop slightly in 2020-21 but then rebound this academic year, for a net growth of 1.7 percent over two years, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,600 U.S. schools.

Absenteeism on the rise

Even if students are enrolled, they won’t get much schooling if they don’t show up.

Last school year, the number of students who were chronically absent — meaning they have missed more than 10 percent of school days — nearly doubled from before the pandemic, according to data from a variety of states and districts studied by EveryDay Labs, a company that works with districts to improve attendance.

This school year, the numbers got even worse.

In Connecticut, for instance, the number of chronically absent students soared from 12 percent in 2019-20 to 20 percent the next year to 24 percent this year, said Emily Bailard, chief executive of the company. In Oakland, Calif., they went from 17.3 percent pre-pandemic to 19.8 percent last school year to 43 percent this year. In Pittsburgh, chronic absences stayed where they were last school year at about 25 percent, then shot up to 45 percent this year.

“We all expected that this year would look much better,” Bailard said. One explanation for the rise may be that schools did not keep careful track of remote attendance last year and the numbers understated the absences then, she said.

The numbers were the worst for the most vulnerable students. This school year in Connecticut, for instance, 24 percent of all students were chronically absent, but the figure topped 30 percent for English-learners, students with disabilities and those poor enough to qualify for free lunch. Among students experiencing homelessness, 56 percent were chronically absent.

Fights and guns

Schools are open for in-person learning almost everywhere, but students returned emotionally unsettled and unable to conform to normally accepted behavior. At its most benign, teachers are seeing kids who cannot focus in class, can’t stop looking at their phones, and can’t figure out how to interact with other students in all the normal ways. Many teachers say they seem younger than normal.

Amy Johnson, a veteran teacher in rural Randolph, Vt., said her fifth-graders had so much trouble being together that the school brought in a behavioral specialist to work with them three hours each week.

“My students are not acclimated to being in the same room together,” she said. “They don’t listen to each other. They cannot interact with each other in productive ways. When I’m teaching I might have three or five kids yelling at me all at the same time.”

That loss of interpersonal skills has also led to more fighting in hallways and after school. Teachers and principals say many incidents escalate from small disputes because students lack the habit of remaining calm. Many say the social isolation wrought during remote school left them with lower capacity to manage human conflict.

Just last week, a high-schooler in Los Angeles was accused of stabbing another student in a school hallway, police on the big island of Hawaii arrested seven students after an argument escalated into a fight, and a Baltimore County, Md., school resource officer was injured after intervening in a fight during the transition between classes.

There’s also been a steep rise in gun violence. In 2021, there were at least 42 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during regular hours, the most during any year since at least 1999, according to a Washington Post database . The most striking of 2021 incidents was the shooting in Oxford, Mich., that killed four. There have been already at least three shootings in 2022.

Back to school has brought guns, fighting and acting out

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which maintains its own database of K-12 school shootings using a different methodology, totaled nine active shooter incidents in schools in 2021, in addition to 240 other incidents of gunfire on school grounds. So far in 2022, it has recorded 12 incidents. The previous high, in 2019, was 119 total incidents.

David Riedman, lead researcher on the K-12 School Shooting Database, points to four shootings on Jan. 19 alone, including at Anacostia High School in D.C., where gunshots struck the front door of the school as a teen sprinted onto the campus, fleeing a gunman.

Seeing opportunity

Fueling the pressure on public schools is an ascendant school-choice movement that promotes taxpayer subsidies for students to attend private and religious schools, as well as publicly funded charter schools, which are privately run. Advocates of these programs have seen the public system’s woes as an excellent opportunity to push their priorities.

EdChoice, a group that promotes these programs, tallies seven states that created new school choice programs last year. Some are voucher-type programs where students take some of their tax dollars with them to private schools. Others offer tax credits for donating to nonprofit organizations, which give scholarships for school expenses. Another 15 states expanded existing programs, EdChoice says.

The troubles traditional schools have had managing the pandemic has been key to the lobbying, said Michael McShane, director of national research for EdChoice. “That is absolutely an argument that school choice advocates make, for sure.”

If those new programs wind up moving more students from public to private systems, that could further weaken traditional schools, even as they continue to educate the vast majority of students.

Kevin G. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, who opposes school choice programs, sees the surge of interest as the culmination of years of work to undermine public education. He is both impressed by the organization and horrified by the results.

“I wish that organizations supporting public education had the level of funding and coordination that I’ve seen in these groups dedicated to its privatization,” he said.

A final complication: Politics

Rarely has education been such a polarizing political topic.

Republicans, fresh off Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race, have concluded that key to victory is a push for parental control and “parents rights.” That’s a nod to two separate topics.

First, they are capitalizing on parent frustrations over pandemic policies, including school closures and mandatory mask policies. The mask debate, which raged at the start of the school year, got new life this month after Youngkin ordered Virginia schools to allow students to attend without face coverings.

The notion of parental control also extends to race, and objections over how American history is taught. Many Republicans also object to school districts’ work aimed at racial equity in their systems, a basket of policies they have dubbed critical race theory. Critics have balked at changes in admissions to elite school in the name of racial diversity, as was done in Fairfax, Va. , and San Francisco ; discussion of White privilege in class ; and use of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which suggests slavery and racism are at the core of American history.

“Everything has been politicized,” said Domenech, of AASA. “You’re beside yourself saying, ‘How did we ever get to this point?’”

Part of the challenge going forward is that the pandemic is not over. Each time it seems to be easing, it returns with a variant vengeance, forcing schools to make politically and educationally sensitive decisions about the balance between safety and normalcy all over again.

At the same time, many of the problems facing public schools feed on one another. Students who are absent will probably fall behind in learning, and those who fall behind are likely to act out.

A similar backlash exists regarding race. For years, schools have been under pressure to address racism in their systems and to teach it in their curriculums, pressure that intensified after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Many districts responded, and that opened them up to countervailing pressures from those who find schools overly focused on race.

Some high-profile boosters of public education are optimistic that schools can move past this moment. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona last week promised, “It will get better.” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “If we can rebuild community-education relations, if we can rebuild trust, public education will not only survive but has a real chance to thrive.”

But the path back is steep, and if history is a guide, the wealthiest schools will come through reasonably well, while those serving low-income communities will struggle. Steve Matthews, superintendent of the 6,900-student Novi Community School District in Michigan, just northwest of Detroit, said his district will probably face a tougher road back than wealthier nearby districts that are, for instance, able to pay teachers more.

“Resource issues. Trust issues. De-professionalization of teaching is making it harder to recruit teachers,” he said. “A big part of me believes schools are in a long-term crisis.”

Valerie Strauss contributed to this report.

The pandemic’s impact on education

The latest: Updated coronavirus booster shots are now available for children as young as 5 . To date, more than 10.5 million children have lost one or both parents or caregivers during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the classroom: Amid a teacher shortage, states desperate to fill teaching jobs have relaxed job requirements as staffing crises rise in many schools . American students’ test scores have even plummeted to levels unseen for decades. One D.C. school is using COVID relief funds to target students on the verge of failure .

Higher education: College and university enrollment is nowhere near pandemic level, experts worry. ACT and SAT testing have rebounded modestly since the massive disruptions early in the coronavirus pandemic, and many colleges are also easing mask rules .

DMV news: Most of Prince George’s students are scoring below grade level on district tests. D.C. Public School’s new reading curriculum is designed to help improve literacy among the city’s youngest readers.

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3. problems students are facing at public k-12 schools, table of contents.

• Problems students are facing
• A look inside the classroom
• How teachers are experiencing their jobs
• How teachers view the education system
• Satisfaction with specific aspects of the job
• Do teachers feel trusted to do their job well?
• Likelihood that teachers will change jobs
• Would teachers recommend teaching as a profession?
• Reasons it’s so hard to get everything done during the workday
• Staffing issues
• Balancing work and personal life
• How teachers experience their jobs
• Lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Major problems at school
• Discipline practices
• Policies around cellphone use
• Verbal abuse and physical violence from students
• Addressing behavioral and mental health challenges
• Teachers’ interactions with parents
• K-12 education and political parties
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

We asked teachers about how students are doing at their school. Overall, many teachers hold negative views about students’ academic performance and behavior.

• 48% say the academic performance of most students at their school is fair or poor; a third say it’s good and only 17% say it’s excellent or very good.
• 49% say students’ behavior at their school is fair or poor; 35% say it’s good and 13% rate it as excellent or very good.

Teachers in elementary, middle and high schools give similar answers when asked about students’ academic performance. But when it comes to students’ behavior, elementary and middle school teachers are more likely than high school teachers to say it’s fair or poor (51% and 54%, respectively, vs. 43%).

Teachers from high-poverty schools are more likely than those in medium- and low-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are fair or poor.

The differences between high- and low-poverty schools are particularly striking. Most teachers from high-poverty schools say the academic performance (73%) and behavior (64%) of most students at their school are fair or poor. Much smaller shares of teachers from low-poverty schools say the same (27% for academic performance and 37% for behavior).

In turn, teachers from low-poverty schools are far more likely than those from high-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are excellent or very good.

Among those who have been teaching for at least a year, about eight-in-ten teachers say the lasting impact of the pandemic on students’ behavior, academic performance and emotional well-being has been very or somewhat negative. This includes about a third or more saying that the lasting impact has been very negative in each area.

Shares ranging from 11% to 15% of teachers say the pandemic has had no lasting impact on these aspects of students’ lives, or that the impact has been neither positive nor negative. Only about 5% say that the pandemic has had a positive lasting impact on these things.

A smaller majority of teachers (55%) say the pandemic has had a negative impact on the way parents interact with teachers, with 18% saying its lasting impact has been very negative.

These results are mostly consistent across teachers of different grade levels and school poverty levels.

When we asked teachers about a range of problems that may affect students who attend their school, the following issues top the list:

• Poverty (53% say this is a major problem at their school)
• Chronic absenteeism – that is, students missing a substantial number of school days (49%)
• Anxiety and depression (48%)

One-in-five say bullying is a major problem among students at their school. Smaller shares of teachers point to drug use (14%), school fights (12%), alcohol use (4%) and gangs (3%).

Differences by school level

Similar shares of teachers across grade levels say poverty is a major problem at their school, but other problems are more common in middle or high schools:

• 61% of high school teachers say chronic absenteeism is a major problem at their school, compared with 43% of elementary school teachers and 46% of middle school teachers.
• 69% of high school teachers and 57% of middle school teachers say anxiety and depression are a major problem, compared with 29% of elementary school teachers.
• 34% of middle school teachers say bullying is a major problem, compared with 13% of elementary school teachers and 21% of high school teachers.

Not surprisingly, drug use, school fights, alcohol use and gangs are more likely to be viewed as major problems by secondary school teachers than by those teaching in elementary schools.

Differences by poverty level

Teachers’ views on problems students face at their school also vary by school poverty level.

Majorities of teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools say chronic absenteeism is a major problem where they teach (66% and 58%, respectively). A much smaller share of teachers in low-poverty schools say this (34%).

Bullying, school fights and gangs are viewed as major problems by larger shares of teachers in high-poverty schools than in medium- and low-poverty schools.

When it comes to anxiety and depression, a slightly larger share of teachers in low-poverty schools (51%) than in high-poverty schools (44%) say these are a major problem among students where they teach.  

About two-thirds of teachers (66%) say that the current discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat mild – including 27% who say they’re very mild. Only 2% say the discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat harsh, while 31% say they are neither harsh nor mild.

We also asked teachers about the amount of influence different groups have when it comes to determining discipline practices at their school.

• 67% say teachers themselves don’t have enough influence. Very few (2%) say teachers have too much influence, and 29% say their influence is about right.

• 31% of teachers say school administrators don’t have enough influence, 22% say they have too much, and 45% say their influence is about right.
• On balance, teachers are more likely to say parents, their state government and the local school board have too much influence rather than not enough influence in determining discipline practices at their school. Still, substantial shares say these groups have about the right amount of influence.

Teachers from low- and medium-poverty schools (46% each) are more likely than those in high-poverty schools (36%) to say parents have too much influence over discipline practices.

In turn, teachers from high-poverty schools (34%) are more likely than those from low- and medium-poverty schools (17% and 18%, respectively) to say that parents don’t have enough influence.

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Trade Schools Home > Articles > Issues in Education

Major Issues in Education: Hot Topics

By Publisher | Last Updated August 29, 2024

In America, issues in education are big topics of discussion, both in the news media and among the general public. The current education system is beset by a wide range of challenges, from cuts in government funding to changes in disciplinary policies—and much more. Everyone agrees that providing high-quality education for our citizens is a worthy ideal. However, there are many diverse viewpoints about how that should be accomplished. And that leads to highly charged debates, with passionate advocates on both sides.

Understanding education issues is important for students, parents, and taxpayers. By being well-informed, you can contribute valuable input to the discussion. You can also make better decisions about what causes you will support or what plans you will make for your future.

This article provides detailed information on many of today's most relevant post-secondary education issues.

7 Big Issues in Higher Education

1. Student loan forgiveness

Here's how the American public education system works: Students attend primary and secondary school at no cost. They have the option of going on to post-secondary training (which, for most students, is not free). So, with costs rising at both public and private institutions of higher learning, student loan debt is one of the most prominent issues in education today. Students who graduated from college in 2022 came out with an average debt load of $37,338. As a whole, Americans owe over $1.7 trillion in student loans.

Currently, students who have received certain federal student loans and are on income-driven repayment plans can qualify to have their remaining balance forgiven if they haven't repaid the loan in full after 20 to 25 years, depending on the plan. Additionally, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program allows qualified borrowers who go into public service careers (such as teaching, government service, social work, or law enforcement) to have their student debt canceled after ten years.

However, potential changes are in the works. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to support students and make getting a post-secondary education more affordable. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education provided more than $17 billion in loan relief to over 700,000 borrowers. Meanwhile, a growing number of Democrats are advocating for free college as an alternative to student loans.

2. Completion rates

The large number of students who begin post-secondary studies but do not graduate continues to be an issue. According to a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report , the overall six-year college completion rate for the cohort entering college in 2015 was 62.2 percent. Around 58 percent of students completed a credential at the same institution where they started their studies, and about another 8 percent finished at a different institution.

Completion rates are increasing, but there is still concern over the significant percentage of college students who do not graduate. Almost 9 percent of students who began college in 2015 had still not completed a degree or certificate six years later. Over 22 percent of them had dropped out entirely.

Significant costs are associated with starting college but not completing it. Many students end up weighed down by debt, and those who do not complete their higher education are less able to repay loans. Plus, students who do not complete college miss out on the formal credentials that could lead to higher earnings. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2023, students who begin college but do not complete a degree have median weekly earnings of $992. By contrast, associate degree holders have median weekly wages of $1,058, and bachelor's degree recipients have median weekly earnings of $1,493.

Students leave college for many reasons, but chief among them is money. To mitigate that, some institutions have implemented small retention or completion grants. Such grants are for students who are close to graduating, have financial need, have used up all other sources of aid, owe a modest amount, and are at risk of dropping out due to lack of funds. One study found that around a third of the institutions that implemented such grants noted higher graduation rates among grant recipients.

3. Student mental health

Mental health challenges among students are a growing concern. A survey by the American College Health Association in the spring of 2019 found that over two-thirds of college students had experienced "overwhelming anxiety" within the previous 12 months. Almost 45 percent reported higher-than-average stress levels.

Anxiety, stress, and depression were the most common concerns among students who sought treatment. The 2021 report by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) noted that the average number of appointments students need has increased by 20 percent.

And some schools are struggling to keep up. A 2020 report found that the average student-to-clinician ratio on U.S. campuses was 1,411 to 1. So, in some cases, suffering students face long waits for treatment.

4. Sexual assault

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that more than 75 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to law enforcement, so the actual number of incidents could be much higher.

And the way that colleges and universities deal with sexual assault is undergoing changes. Title IX rules make sure that complaints of sexual assault or harassment are taken seriously and that the accused person is treated fairly.

Administrators were also required to adjudicate such cases based on a preponderance of evidence, meaning that they had to believe that it was more likely than not that an accused was guilty in order to proceed with disciplinary action. The "clear and convincing" evidentiary standard, which required that administrators be reasonably certain that sexual violence or harassment occurred, was deemed unacceptable.

Critics argued that the guidelines failed to respect the due process rights of those accused of sexual misconduct. Research has found that the frequency of false sexual assault allegations is between two and 10 percent.

In 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines. The intent was to institute new regulations on how schools should handle sexual assault allegations. The changes went into effect on August 14, 2020, defining sexual harassment more narrowly and only requiring schools to investigate formal complaints about on-campus incidents officially filed with designated authorities, such as Title IX coordinators. The updated guidelines also allow schools to use the clear and convincing standard for conviction.

Victims' rights advocates were concerned this approach would deter victims from coming forward and hinder efforts to create safe learning environments.

The new Title IX regulations reversed many of these changes. The Biden administration finalized the changes in April 2024, and the changes took effect on August 1, 2024. These updates will hopefully strengthen victims' protection, even as they also restore justice and due process in dealing with issues related to sexual misconduct.

5. Trigger warnings

The use of trigger warnings in academia is a highly contentious issue. Trigger warnings alert students that upcoming course material contains concepts or images that may invoke psychological or physiological reactions in people who have experienced trauma. Some college instructors provide such warnings before introducing films, texts, or other content involving things like violence or sexual abuse. The idea is to give students advance notice so that they can psychologically prepare themselves.

Some believe that trigger warnings are essential because they allow vulnerable people to prepare for and navigate difficult content. Having trigger warnings allows students with post-traumatic stress to decide whether they will engage with the material or find an alternative way to acquire the necessary information.

Critics argue that trigger warnings constrain free speech and academic freedom by discouraging the discussion of topics that might trigger distressing reactions in some students. They point out that college faculty already provide detailed course syllabi and that it's impossible to anticipate and acknowledge every potential trigger.

In 2015, NPR Ed surveyed more than 800 faculty members at higher education institutions across the U.S. and found that around half had given trigger warnings before bringing up potentially disturbing course material. Most did so on their own initiative, not in response to administrative policy or student requests. Few schools either mandate or prohibit trigger warnings. One notable exception is the University of Chicago, which in 2016 informed all incoming first-year students that it did not support such warnings.

6. College accreditation

In order to participate in federal student financial aid programs, institutions of higher education must be accredited by an agency that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. By law, accreditors must consider factors such as an institution's facilities, equipment, curricula, admission practices, faculty, and support services. The idea is to enforce an acceptable standard of quality.

However, while federal regulations require accreditors to assess each institution's "success with respect to student achievement," they don't specify how to measure such achievement. Accreditors are free to define that for themselves. Unfortunately, some colleges with questionable practices, low graduation rates, and high student loan default rates continue to be accredited. Critics argue that accreditors are not doing enough to ensure that students receive good value for their money.

7. College rankings

Every year, prospective college students and their families turn to rankings like the ones produced by U.S. News & World Report to compare different institutions of higher education. Many people accept such rankings as authoritative without truly understanding how they are calculated or what they measure.

It's common for ranking organizations to refine their methodologies from year to year and change how they weigh various factors—which means it's possible for colleges to rise or fall in the rankings despite making no substantive changes to their programs or institutional policies. That makes it difficult to compare rankings from one year to the next since things are often measured differently.

For colleges, a higher ranking can lead to more visibility, more qualified applicants, and more alumni donations (in short, more money). And the unfortunate reality is that some schools outright lie about test scores, graduation rates, or financial information in their quest to outrank their competitors.

Others take advantage of creative ways to game the system. For example, U.S. News looks at the test scores of incoming students at each institution, but it only looks at students who begin in the fall semester. One school instituted a program where students with lower test scores could spend their first semester in a foreign country and return to the school in the spring, thus excluding them from the U.S. News calculations.

Rankings do make useful information about U.S. colleges and universities available to all students and their families. However, consumers should be cautious about blindly accepting such rankings as true measures of educational quality.

Explore Your Educational Options

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Comparing the education policy proposals from Harris and Trump

William Brangham William Brangham

Saher Khan Saher Khan

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The issue of education in America has barely been discussed in this campaign, despite there being very sharp differences between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on how best to teach children into the future. William Brangham looks into their positions on K-12 education for our promises and policies series.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz:

The issue of education in America has barely been discussed in this campaign, despite there being very sharp differences between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on how best to teach America's kids into the future.

William Brangham has been looking into their positions on K-12 education for our Promises and Policies series, and he joins us now.

Good to see you, William.

William Brangham:

So education policy has not at all been a major focus of this campaign season. Do you have a sense of why that is?

On some level, I think it's a reflection of the electorate, and the polls show that the economy and immigration are top issues, I mean, for Democrats, also the worry about democracy.

I mean, at both the vice presidential and presidential debate, not one question asked about education, not one answer or issue offered about it, except for a brief mention of school shootings, which is kind of the opposite of education.

It is striking, though, given we are seeing this drop in the ability of fourth graders and eighth graders to do basic math and to read at a grade level, that this is not more of a national issue. When education is being discussed in this campaign, it is most often the things that Donald Trump has been focusing on.

And that's, number one, the fight over school curriculums and the teaching specifically of history and race and gender and the fight over school choice and whether parents should have public school money to do with as they please.

So let's just talk about where each of the candidates stand then. Let's start with former President Trump.

What are his plans for education if he were to win reelection?

Trump has some contradictory ideas on this front. On one hand he says, I want to destroy, get rid of the Department of Education, which is the primary way that a president could enact education policy.

Republicans have talked about doing this for years. It goes back to Reagan. When Trump was president, he tried to do it. Didn't work. So that's, one, his stated goal, to get out of the federal government being involved in education, let parents handle it.

But then he also wants to have very granular attention to what is being taught in schools. I mean, he says he wants his education secretary to examine the curriculum of tens of thousands of public schools around the country to make sure they're not teaching what he says is woke ideology.

He talks a lot about this, that public schools are somehow brainwashing children and that he's going to cut their money if they do that. Now, presidents don't necessarily have that power, but this is something he talks about a lot.

One extreme example of this, Donald Trump has repeatedly sketched out this nonexistent scenario where a child goes to school in the morning, and somehow school officials do some sort of procedure to change that child's gender and sends home — again, without the parents' consent, and sends home a different child at the end of the day.

Again, there is no evidence of this kind of a thing happening, but this is often how he talks about these things. Here's him speaking to a group of Christian leaders.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: On day one, I will sign an executive order banning schools from promoting Critical Race Theory or transgender insanity.

Donald Trump:

I will take historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders, male and female. I will keep men out of women's sports.

So, William, you also mentioned school choice. We know that's something former President Trump has been a big proponent of, and that was something he pushed for when he was president, right?

This is the idea of letting parents take taxpayer school funded money and pay for private school or religious school or use it for homeschooling. Betsy DeVos, his previous education secretary, tried to do this. It was — failed at doing that. Trump also wants to give parents the ability to fire teachers and to reduce tenure protections.

Again, these are not a lot of things that the presidents have power to do, but Trump is clearly signaling here that he wants to get the federal government out of this, he wants to put parents back in charge, and that he will be some sort of federal enforcer.

OK. So that's former President Trump.

Let's talk about Vice President Harris. As we said, this is not a central issue to her campaign. But what do we know about her plans if she were to be elected president?

When Harris talks about education policy, she's most often talking about the things that Donald Trump is proposing and how much she dislikes them.

For example, she very much thinks eliminating the Department of Education is a terrible idea. She wants to strengthen its two main funding streams. That's money to educate low-income kids and disabled children. She regularly sides with teachers, saying, I want to boost your pay. She tried to propose that earlier in her previous campaign.

She has been very critical of Trump's attacks on curriculum around the country, specifically these 4,000-plus book bans that we have seen all over the country, many of which were enacted by Trump's allies.

Here's how she described these efforts when she was talking to the teachers union.

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: These extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation's true and full history, including book bans, book bans in this Year of our Lord 2024.

So we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.

Kamala Harris:

Can you imagine?

So, William, Vice President Harris, her party as well have talked a lot about early education, how we teach very young children. So what does that look like if she's elected?

That has been one of her most concrete proposals.

Her argument has been every dollar the federal government spends on early childhood education, you reap enormous benefits throughout that child's life, as does the U.S. economy. She's been a big champion of Head Start, the program for low-income families. The Democratic Party platform has called for universal free preschool for kids.

Harris has been a big proponent of the child tax credit and tried to bump that up as well. Those are her proposals, but, again, a lot of her public discussion about education has been, Donald Trump has dangerous ideas that will set back the cause of education in America.

All right, William Brangham with a closer look at both candidates on education.

William, thank you.

You're welcome, Amna.

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Democrats Used to Run on Education. What Happened?

How the party gave up on one of its best issues..

There’s a scene in The War Room , the 1993 documentary about the Clinton campaign, that is replayed in the new CNN documentary about James Carville. George Stephanopoulos, flush with victory, starts telling the staff and volunteers crowded around him about the good things that will happen because they won. He mentions health care. He mentions jobs. And he says kids will get access to better schools.

It’s an unobtrusive line that stands out 30 years later. The reason: Better schools are no longer part of the basic litany of promises Democratic candidates make.

If you scroll over to Kamala Harris’s issues page , there’s plenty of programmatic detail, but look closely at the education section:

Vice President Harris will fight to ensure parents can afford high-quality child care and preschool for their children. She will strengthen public education and training as a pathway to the middle class. And she’ll continue working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable, so that college can be a ticket to the middle class. To date, Vice President Harris has helped deliver the largest investment in public education in American history, provide nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost five million borrowers, and deliver record investments in HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other minority-serving institutions. She helped more students afford college by increasing the maximum Pell Grant award by $900 — the largest increase in more than a decade — and invested in community colleges. She has implemented policies that have led to over one million registered apprentices being hired, and she will do even more to scale up programs that create good career pathways for non-college graduates.

Almost nothing here addresses K–12 education. There are details about kids younger than K–12 (expanding access to pre-K and child care) and students older than K–12 (college grants, apprenticeships, and career options for noncollege graduates). But other than a vague promise to “strengthen public education and training as a pathway to the middle class,” which could apply to postsecondary education as well as primary, there’s nothing here about schools.

It wasn’t long ago that education (which everybody understood as “public schools”) was one of the party’s best issues. Bill Clinton invoked it constantly and positioned Democrats on the side of embryonic reform experiments then sprouting up. When he fought back against Republican plans to slash government, his formula was “Medicare, Medicaid, Education, and the Environment,” identifying schools as one of the four pillars of government that would cement public loyalty to the Democratic Party and make concrete the costs of the Republican plan.

George W. Bush fashioned a Republican education agenda in 2000 because Republicans understood they needed to cut down the Democratic advantage on the issue to have a chance to win. When Barack Obama cemented the primary, he gave a pep talk to his staff in Chicago similar to the Stephanopoulos one, and his short list of issues also included education.

Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention prominently included a promise to reform and improve public schools:

I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance. I’ll invest in early-childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.

Obama’s support for education reform did not work perfectly or seamlessly, but it did yield positive results in many ways. (I wrote a long story about the success of the education-reform movement four years ago; last year, the main study that charter-school skeptics had previously cited found the sector is now delivering large learning gains to urban students). But the internal political blowback from teachers unions made the position more of a hassle than Democrats were willing to accept. Obama himself stopped defending his own education agenda in the face of anger from unions whose support he and his party needed.

From the end of the Obama era, Democrats started to abandon education reform and instead adopted a more neutral position aligned with teachers unions. Hillary Clinton edged away from Obama’s stance in 2016, and Joe Biden edged even further in 2020. The pandemic cast Democrats’ more union-friendly education stance in a harsher light; Democrats defended school closings and, in some instances, exposed parents to left-wing pedagogy that had become fashionable in recent years.

The most extreme version of the new progressive-education stance can be found in Chicago. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former member and staunch ally of the Chicago Teachers Union, has attempted to implement its policy vision. The city’s schools are hemorrhaging students, and the temporary COVID funding it had used to sustain its budget is drying up.

Johnson and the CTU oppose closing any schools, even those with barely any students. Three-fifths of the city’s schools are underenrolled . One school has 27 students in a building meant to serve 900. Johnson’s plan is to take out a short-term loan to finance the gap and worry about the cost later. When critics questioned the sustainability of this plan, he likened them to defenders of slavery: “The argument was you can’t free Black people because it would be too expensive. They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people. And now, you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”

Johnson’s unyielding stance may be an outlier. The CTU is radical even by teachers-union standards, and Chicago is a rare example of a city over which it can exert essentially direct, rather than indirect, control. But the degree to which Johnson has made left-wing pro-union education policy the centerpiece of his agenda — and seen his popularity plummet — indicates how toxic the agenda is even among overwhelmingly Democratic voters.

The pandemic certainly played an important confounding role. But it merely served to expose a change in the party’s stance on public schools that no longer placed the well-being of schoolchildren at its center. The moral ambition of providing a quality public school for every child has proven too controversial to pursue. Trying to maintain the status quo, even one in which many low-income children have no option other than failing schools, appears to be the path of least resistance.

Public education used to be one of the strongest reasons Democrats could give for people to vote them into power. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that moving left on education has led more or less directly to Democrats’ forfeiting what had once been a major advantage. There are still, of course, compelling reasons to vote for the Democrats. But not even Democratic candidates seem to consider schools one of them.

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• Children in need

Introduction

This annual release contains statistics on children in need in England and referrals to and assessments completed by children's social care services. Each reporting year covers the year ending 31 March.

Children in need are a legally defined group of children (under the Children Act 1989 (opens in a new tab) ), assessed as needing help and protection as a result of risks to their development or health. This group includes: those on child in need plans, those on child protection plans, children looked after by local authorities, care leavers and disabled children. Children in need also include young people aged 18 or over who continue to receive care, accommodation or support from children's services, and unborn children.

Comparisons within this release have been made between 2024 and a year earlier, and 2024 and the start of the series (2013 for most, but not all, measures). In addition, to assess any potential longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on children's social care services, comparisons have also been made between the latest year and 2020, which (mostly) pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

All 153 local authorities provided a return for the 2024 collection. However, due to a transition to a new case management and reporting system there were significant data quality issues affecting Hampshire's return. As a result, the figures for this local authority have been replaced with ‘u’ to indicate low reliability in the underlying datasets and 2023 figures for Hampshire have been included in the 2024 totals for England and the South East region.

Quick links

Related information, data guidance.

• Pre-release access list

Releases in this series

• Reporting year 2023
• Reporting year 2022
• Reporting year 2021
• Reporting year 2020
• Reporting Year 2019
• Reporting Year 2018
• Reporting Year 2017
• Reporting Year 2016
• Reporting Year 2015
• Reporting Year 2014
• Reporting Year 2013
• Reporting Year 2012
• Reporting Year 2011
• Reporting Year 2010

Methodologies

Headline facts and figures - 2024, explore data and files used in this release, view or create your own tables.

View tables that we have built for you, or create your own tables from open data using our table tool

Data catalogue

Browse and download open data files from this release in our data catalogue

Learn more about the data files used in this release using our online guidance

Download all data (ZIP)

Download all data available in this release as a compressed ZIP file

There were nearly 400,000 children in need in 2024 (as at 31 March), equivalent to around 1 in every 30 children. Both the number and the associated rate decreased in 2024, continuing the fall seen in 2023. However, the latest number and rate were up compared with 2020. 

Number and rate (per 10,000 children) of children in need at 31 March, 2020 to 2024

Episodes of need in the year ending 31 march.

An episode of need begins when a child is referred to children’s social care services and is assessed as being in need of children’s social care services. An episode of need ends when the case is closed and the child is no longer deemed to be in need of children’s social care services. Episodes of need exclude referrals which require no further action or where a child is subsequently assessed as not in need. A child can have more than one episode during the year, but episodes should not overlap.

The number of episodes starting in 2024 decreased by nearly 9,000 episodes or 2.2% compared to the previous year, and the number of episodes ending decreased by 6,300 episodes or 1.7%. In 2021, episodes of need starting and episodes ending fell to the lowest point in the series (which started in 2013), likely attributable to COVID-19. The latest figure for episodes of need starting represents the second lowest in the series.

Throughout the series, the number of episodes starting has been greater than the number of episodes ending. It is important to note that a child can have more than one episode during the year.

Duration of episodes of need in the year ending 31 March

Almost half of all episodes ending in 2024 lasted 3 months or less, whereas 1 in 10 lasted for two years or more. This pattern is similar to previous years.

Children in need at 31 March by characteristics

In 2024, males continued to be slightly over-represented in the children in need population: 55% were male, compared to 51% of the overall child population (as shown in the  latest ONS mid-year population estimates (opens in a new tab) ).

Of those where ethnicity was known, 69% of children in need were white in 2024. 31% were from all other ethnic groups combined, up from 25% in 2015 and slightly higher than the 27% reported for the overall child population in the  2021 census (opens in a new tab) .

The children in need population is aging and those aged 10 and over now make up the majority (59% in 2024, up from 48% in 2015). In 2024, young people aged 18 or over who continued to receive care, accommodation or support from children’s services accounted for 14% of children in need. Unborn children accounted for 2%.

Children in need at 31 March by gender, ethnicity and age, 2015 and 2024

• ‘pp’ indicates percentage point

Child in need plans - official statistics in development

Official statistics in development are official statistics that are undergoing development (previously called experimental statistics). Data on child in need (CIN) plans were collected and reported on for the third year in these 2024 statistics and evaluation is ongoing.

In 2024, 150 out of the 153 local authorities provided usable data on child in need plans, an increase of three from 2023. Of those that did, it is likely that recording practices varied across local authorities and therefore the data should be treated with caution.

The data has been collected with the intention of helping the department to develop its understanding of the child’s journey following a referral to children’s social care services.

A CIN plan should be developed where an assessment finds that the child requires support from their local authority’s children’s social care services to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health and/or development.

CIN plans require a lower level of intervention and are distinct from child protection plans, which are put in place when a child is found to have suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm. Children on CIN plans and children on protection plans are also distinct from: children looked after by local authorities; care leavers; those who are disabled but not on a CIN plan; and those who may potentially be on another type of plan or arrangement.

CIN plans should set out the support to be provided to a child and/or family by children’s services. The plan should also set clear measurable outcomes for the child and expectations for the parent(s) or carer(s).

150 out of 153 (98%) local authorities provided data on CIN plans. They recorded 103,440 children on CIN plans in 2024 (as at 31 March). Scaling nationally to account for missing data suggests that there were approximately 105,000 children on CIN plans in 2024, the same as the 2023 figure, but down 5,000 or 4% from 2022.

A referral is defined as a request for services to be provided by children’s social care and is regarding a child who is not currently in need. A re-referral occurs when a child is referred within 12 months of a previous referral.

There were over 620,000 referrals in (the year ending 31 March) 2024, down 18,600 or 2.9% from 2023.

The latest annual decrease continues the fall seen between 2022 and 2023. 2021 represented the lowest figure since the first year of the series in 2013, and had the largest annual fall in the series (down 45,200). This in turn was mainly driven by a fall in school referrals (down 35,800) attributable to COVID-19 school attendance restrictions being in place for parts of the year. A rise followed in 2022, bringing the number of referrals roughly back to pre-COVID levels and likely linked to the same restrictions no longer being in place.

The number of re-referrals decreased by 4,700 or 3.3% since 2023, following a rise in re-referrals the previous year. Re-referrals represented over a fifth of referrals in 2024, a similar level to previous years.

Source of referrals in the year to 31 March

Referrals to children’s social care services can be made from various sources. In 2024, referrals from the police remained the most common source, accounting for nearly 3 in 10 referrals. This was followed by those from schools, which accounted for 2 in 10 referrals.

Between 2023 and 2024, referrals from the police had the largest numeric decrease (down 7,300), whilst referrals from education services (other than schools) had the largest percentage decrease (down 18.0%).

Referrals requiring no further action or subsequently assessed as not in need in the year to 31 March

Between 2013 and 2021, the percentage of referrals which resulted in no further action after initial consideration (but no assessment) mostly decreased each year, falling overall by more than half.

Information from local authorities suggests that while local practice varies, there has been a general trend in recent years for some children to be triaged to other services if required, for example early help, instead of being referred to children's services and those that are referred will have met the threshold for a social care assessment. This is likely to have contributed to the fall in referrals resulting in no further action. Whilst the percentage increased in 2022, the latest 2024 rate of 6.3% represents a similar percentage to 2021.

In contrast, the percentage of referrals subsequently assessed as not in need increased each year between 2013 and 2021, rising overall by over half. Whilst the percentage fell in 2022, the latest 2024 rate of 30.3% is similar to the 2021 rate.

In 2024, over a third of referrals either resulted in no further action after initial consideration or were subsequently assessed as not in need.

Assessments

When a child is referred to children’s social care services, an assessment is carried out (usually within 45 working days of a referral) to identify if the child is in need of services. These services can include, for example, family support, leaving care support, adoption support or disabled children’s services (including social care or education and health provision).

The latest figure of over 643,000 completed assessments in 2024 represents a fall of 12,400 assessments, or 1.9%, compared to 2023 and a fall of 22,500 or 3.4% compared to 2020.

2021 had the largest annual decrease in the series (down 39,700), which started in 2015, likely linked to a fall in referrals (also largest fall in the series). This in turn was mainly driven by a fall in school referrals attributable to COVID-19 school attendance restrictions being in place for parts of the year. A rise followed in 2022, likely linked to the same restrictions no longer being in place.

Except for 2021, up to 2023, the number of assessments increased each year since the series started in 2015.

The average (median) duration of an assessment increased to 34 days in 2024, a series peak, up from 33 days in 2023.

Children in need at 31 March by primary need at assessment

A social worker determines the child’s primary need at their first assessment. Only one primary need can be reported at this point and is selected from a hierarchical list (as shown in the chart below). In cases where multiple needs are identified, the need highest in the list is reported.

Over half of children in need in 2024 had abuse or neglect identified as their primary need at assessment.

Between 2023 and 2024, apart from for absent parenting (up 960 or 4.6%) and abuse or neglect (up 440 or 0.2%), all of the primary need categories fell, with family dysfunction having the largest decrease (down 3,300 or 6.4%).

Overall, primary need at assessment showed a similar pattern to previous years.

Factors identified at the end of assessment

Factors identified at the end of assessment are additional factors that social workers record as being relevant in a case. These figures are based on assessment factors recorded against individual episodes of need, which begin when a child is referred to children’s social care services and is assessed as being in need of children’s social care services. Each unique factor is counted once against a given episode, irrespective of the number of times the same factor was recorded in that episode. However, as a child can have more than one episode of need during the year (ending 31 March), the same child can be recorded more than once for a given factor. The majority of children have more than one unique factor recorded for each episode of need. It should be noted that not all episodes have factors recorded, but this has improved over time. Nonetheless, there can be differences in the recording practices between local authorities therefore this data should be treated with caution and shouldn’t be taken to represent the national, regional or local authority level prevalence of particular issues.

Concerns about the mental health of the child's parent/carer and the child’s parent/carer being the victim of domestic abuse remained the most common factors in the year to 31 March 2024, with both factors being identified in nearly one third of episodes with assessment factors recorded.

Section 47 enquiries and initial child protection conferences

If a local authority identifies there is reasonable cause to suspect the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer significant harm, it will carry out an assessment under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 to determine if it needs to take steps to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child. If concerns are substantiated and the child is judged to be at continuing risk of harm then an initial child protection conference (ICPC) should be convened within 15 working days.

There were nearly 225,000 section 47 enquiries in (the year ending 31 March) 2024. Both the number and associated rate decreased in 2024, from the series peaks in 2023. However, the latest figures represented the second highest in the series (started 2013) and were up compared with 2020.

There were over 72,000 ICPCs in 2024. Both the number and rate fell compared with 2023 and 2020.

2021 had the largest fall in the series (started 2013) for both the number of Section 47s and ICPCs, likely linked to a decrease in referrals (also largest fall in the series). This in turn was mainly driven by a fall in school referrals attributable to COVID-19 school attendance restrictions being in place for parts of the year. A rise followed in 2022, likely linked to the same restrictions no longer being in place.

In 2024, nearly one third of section 47 enquiries led to an ICPC. This rate has steadily declined since 2013, when nearly half of section 47 enquiries led to an ICPC.

Number and rate (per 10,000 children) of section 47 enquiries and initial child protection conferences, year ending 31 March, 2020 to 2024

Child protection plans.

A child becomes the subject of a child protection plan if they are assessed as being at risk of harm at an initial child protection conference (ICPC).

There were nearly 50,000 children on protection plans in 2024 (as at 31 March), equivalent to approximately 1 in every 240 children. Both the number and the associated rate decreased in 2024, representing the second consecutive year of decline, and the lowest number since 2015 and the lowest rate since 2013.

2021 had the second largest fall in the series in the number of children on protection plans, linked to the decrease in Section 47s and ICPCs in the same year (see preceding section).

Number and rate (per 10,000 children) of children on protection plans as at 31 March, 2020 to 2024

Child protection plans at 31 march by initial category of abuse.

Neglect and emotional abuse remained the most common initial categories of abuse for children on protection plans in 2024, respectively accounting for around half and over one-third of children. The pattern of initial category of abuse has remained steady in recent years.

In 2024, the number of children on protection plans decreased across all categories except for neglect which increased (up 300 or 1.2%).

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Methodology.

Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics have been independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics . Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 .

Accreditation signifies their compliance with the authority's Code of Practice for Statistics which broadly means these statistics are:

• managed impartially and objectively in the public interest
• meet identified user needs
• produced according to sound methods
• well explained and readily accessible

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing [email protected] or via the OSR website .

If you have a specific enquiry about Children in need statistics and data:

Children’s Services Statistics Team

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Peter DeWitt's

Finding common ground.

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, Peter DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. Former superintendent Michael Nelson is a frequent contributor. Read more from this blog .

12 Critical Issues Facing Education in 2020

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Education has many critical issues; although if you watch the nightly news or 24/7 news channels, you will most likely see very little when it comes to education. Our political climate has taken over the news, and it seems as though education once again takes a back seat to important political events as well as salacious stories about reality-television stars. It sometimes make me wonder how much education is valued?

Every year around this time, I highlight some critical issues facing education. It’s not that I am trying to rush the holiday season by posting it well before the 1 st of the new year. It’s actually that I believe we should have a critical look at the issues we face in education, and create some dialogue and action around these issues, and talk about them sooner than later.

Clearly, the fact that we are entering into 2020 means we need to look at some of these issues with hindsight because we have seen them before. Have the issues of the past changed or do they continue to impact our lives? As with any list, you will notice one missing that you believe should be added. Please feel free to use social media or the comment box at the end of this blog to add the ones you believe should be there.

12 Issues Facing Education

These issues are not ranked in order of importance. I actually developed a list of about 20 critical issues but wanted to narrow it down to 12. They range from issues that impact our lives in negative ways to issues that impact our lives in positive ways, and I wanted to provide a list of issues I feel educators will believe are in their control.

I have spent the better part of 2019 on the road traveling across the U.S., Canada, Europe, the U.K., and Australia. The issues that are highlighted below have come up in most of those countries, but they will be particularly important for those of us living in the U.S. There are a couple that seem to be specifically a U.S. issue, and that will be obvious to you when you see them.

Health & Wellness - Research shows that many of our students are stressed out , anxiety-filled, and at their breaking point. Teachers and leaders are experiencing those same issues. Whether it’s due to social media, being overscheduled, or the impact of high-stakes testing and pressure to perform, this needs to be the year where mindfulness becomes even more important than it was in 2019. Whether it’s using mindfulness apps and programs or the implementation of double recess in elementary school and frequent brain beaks throughout the day, it’s time schools are given the autonomy to help students find more balance.

Literacy - We have too many students not reading with proficiency, and therefore, at risk of missing out on the opportunity to reach their full potential. For decades there have been debates about whole language and phonics while our students still lag behind. It’s time to put a deep focus on teaching literacy with a balanced approach.

School Leadership - Many school leaders enter into the position with high hopes of having a deep impact but are not always prepared for what they find. School leadership has the potential to be awesome. And when I mention school leadership, I am also referring to department chairs, PLC leads, or grade-level leaders. Unfortunately, not all leaders feel prepared for the position. Leadership is about understanding how to get people to work together, having a deep understanding of learning, and building the capacity of everyone around them. This means that university programs, feeder programs, and present leaders who coach those who want to be leaders, need to find ways to expose potential leaders to all of the goodness, as well as the hardships, that come with the position.

Our Perception of Students - For the last year I have been involved in some interesting dialogue in schools. One of the areas of concern is the perception educators (i.e. leaders, teachers, etc.) have of their students. Sometimes we lower our expectations of students because of the background they come from, and other times we hold unreachable expectations because we believe our students are too coddled. And even worse, I have heard educators talk about certain students in very negative ways, with a clear bias that must get in the way of how they teach those students. Let 2020 be a year when we focus on our perception of students and address those biases that may bleed into our teaching and leading.

Cultures of Equity - I learned a long time ago that the history I learned about in my K-12 education was a white-washed version of it all. There is more than one side to those stories, and we need all of them for a deeper understanding of the world. Read this powerful guest blog by Michael Fullan and John Malloy for a deeper look into cultures of equity.

Additionally, we have an achievement gap with some marginalized populations (i.e., African American boys), and have other marginalized populations (i.e., LGBTQ) who do not feel safe in school. Isn’t school supposed to be a safe place where every student reaches their full potential?

Students and the schools they attend need to be provided with equitable resources, and we know that is not happening yet. My go-to resource is always Rethinking Schools .

District Office/Building-Level Relationships - There are too many school districts with a major disconnection between the district office and building level leaders. 2020 needs to be the year when more district offices find a balance between the top-down initaitives that take place, and creating more space to engage in dialogue with building leaders and teachers. School districts will likely never improve if people are constantly told what to do and not given the opportunity to share the creative side that probably got them hired in the first place.

Politics - It’s an election year. Get ready for the wave of everything that comes with it. Negative campaigns and bad behavior by adults at the same time we tell students to be respectful to each other. It’s important for us to open up this dialogue in our classrooms, and talk about how to respectfully agree or disagree. Additionally, we have to wonder how the campaigns and ultimate presidential decision will impact education because the last few education secretaries have not given us all that much to cheer about.

Our Perception of Teachers - Over the last few decades there has been a concerted effort to make teachers look as though they chose teaching because they could not do anything else. Whether it be in political rhetoric or through the media and television programs, our dialogue has not been kind, and it has led to a negative perception of teachers. This rhetoric has not only been harmful to school climates, it has turned some teachers into passive participants in their own profession. Teachers are educated, hardworking professionals who are trying to help meet the academic and social-emotional needs of their students, which is not always easy.

Vaping - Many of the middle and high schools in the U.S. that I am working with are experiencing too many students who vape, and some of those students are doing it in class. In fact, this NBC story shows that there has been a major spike in the use of vaping among adolescents. Additionally This story shows that vaping is a major health crisis , and it will take parents, schools, and society to put a dent in it.

Time on Task vs. Student Engagement - For too long we have agreed upon words like “Time on task,” which often equates to students being passive in their own learning. It’s time we focus on student engagement, which allows us to go from surface to deep level learning and on to transfer level learning. It also helps balance the power in the room between adults and students.

Teachers With guns - I need to be honest with you; this one was not easy to add to the list, and it is very much a U.S. issue. I recently saw this story on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt that focused on teachers in Utah being trained to shoot guns in case of an active shooter in their school. This is a story that we will see more of in 2020.

Climate Change - Whether it’s because they were inspired by Greta Thunberg (Time Person of the Year) or the years of hearing about climate change in school and at home, young people will continue to rise up and make climate change a critical issue in 2020. We saw thousands of students strike this year and that will surely rise after Thunberg’s latest recognition.

In the End - It’s always interesting to reflect on the year and begin compiling a list of critical issues. I know it can be daunting to look at, and begin to see where we fit into all of this, but I have always believed that education is about taking on some of this crucial issues and turning them around to make them better. Anyone who gets into teaching needs to believe that they can improve the educational experience for their students, and these are just a few places to start.

Peter DeWitt, Ed.D. is the author of several books including Coach It Further: Using the Art of Coaching to Improve School Leadership (Corwin Press. 2018), and Instructional Leadership: Creating Practice Out Of Theory (Corwin Press. 2020). Connect with him on Twitter , Instagram or through his YouTube station .

Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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