Malala Yousafzai and girls' access to education – get the data

Malala Yousafzai – the young campaigner who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in Pakistan last October – has drawn the world's attention to the fight for girls' access to education.

On Friday, she marks her 16th birthday by delivering a speech at the UN, and a petition calling on the general assembly "to fund new teachers, schools, books and recommit to getting every girl and boy in school by December 2015".

Globally, more children are in primary school than ever before. Yet an estimated 57 million remain out of school, and gender disparities are large in many countries. How big is the gender gap in schools around the world? How has the picture changed in recent years?

The UN uses a gender parity index (GPI), comparing girls' gross enrollment rates to those of boys, to track progress towards the millennium development goal (MDG) target to achieve parity in primary and secondary education by 2015. A GPI lower than 1.0 signifies more boys in school than girls, with scores above 1.0 reflecting more girls than boys.

At the global level, the MDG target on parity at primary school has already been met. Estimates of global progress can mask stark differences at the country or regional level, however. Today, the gender gap in primary education is concentrated in a much smaller group of countries. The visualisation above shows how the picture has changed since the 1970s.

In Pakistan, there are an estimated 82 girls for every 100 boys at primary school. While still far from parity, this reflects significant progress since 1990, when there were only 52 girls for every 100 boys, and even more since the early 1970s, when estimates suggest boys outnumbered girls by almost three to one. The table below compares Pakistan's progress towards gender parity at primary school with four nearby countries – Afghanistan, Iran, India and Tajikistan.

Pakistan and nearby countries. Download the full data below.

At the secondary school level, less than 40% of countries have met the MDG target on gender parity. The remaining 60% are roughly split between those where boys outnumber girls and others where girls outnumber boys.

In higher education, the global gender gap is significant – but at this level, women outnumber men. In 2011, there were 108 women studying at this level for every 100 men.

Men outnumbered women in higher education until the late 1990s, when the world reached parity. Since 2004, however, the number of women in post-secondary school globally has exceeded that of men, with the gap steadily growing. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the ratio of women to men studying at this level has dropped – from 66 women for every 100 men in 2000 to 61 in 2011.

Last month, the UN warned that progress on reducing the number of children out of school has ground to a "virtual standstill". Between 2008 and 2011, the number of out-of-school children of primary age fell by only 3 million.

"If this rate of change continues over the next few years, the world will still be far from the goal of UPE [universal primary education] in 2015," warned a report from Unesco and the Education for All campaign, which pointed to declining donor support for education.

International aid for basic education dropped 6% between 2010 and 2011, with six of the world's top 10 donors – Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the US – cutting spending. Aid to secondary education declined by 11% between 2010 and 2011.

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Malala Yousafzai's diary inspires other Pashtun girls yearning for education

Pakistani girls at school in Mingora, Swat. The Taliban's shooting of Malala Yousafzai has paradoxically inspired other girls to study. Photo: A Majeed/AFP/Getty

For many in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban, is a symbol of resilience and courage in her fight for the right of young girls to receive an education. For hardline right-wing groups and conspiracy theorists, she is a controversial figure accused of being a "CIA agent" and having staged the attack on herself.

But for young Pashtun girls in Karachi, Malala's struggle to get an education in the Swat region amid an insurgency is an inspiration. This part of Malala's life – documented in a diary published by the BBC – has encouraged many of them to start writing and sharing their own dreams of staying in school.

After the Pakistani Taliban attempted to assassinate Malala last October, a young teacher with the Teach for Pakistan programme started reading Malala's diary to her 13-year-old pupils at a government-run secondary school in Karachi.

"They had heard other things about her," recalls Afrah Qureshi, who teaches English to 200 students at the school, in a poor, conservative Pashtun district. "Some said that they had heard she had committed blasphemy, that she had said something about religion. And then I asked them if they had read Malala's diary."

Qureshi began reading a page of Malala's diary to her young pupils every day in her class, and encouraged them to begin writing their own. As they read her diary, their perceptions changed almost entirely. "They loved reading her thoughts," said Qureshi. "I wanted them to make an informed opinion."

One 14-year-old girl, Sara*, writes in an elegant, cursive hand and at length about her own aspirations and scenes from everyday life. "I think Malala is a brave and an intelligent girl," reads the first entry in her own diary, titled A Tribute to Malala.

"The Taliban should not stop her to go to school because every person has their own life. A killer should not attack on her because it is not right … We all should respect our talented people, as we respect Malala."

Sara told the Guardian that she had enjoyed reading Malala's diary and her story in her own words, and she loved writing her own diary. "It improves my English," she said.

One year on, she says she can't wait to return to school after the summer holiday is over. "I didn't like studying so much before, but now I really want to. My younger brothers, my sister and I … we are all reading our books."

Sara's diary is a reflection of the perils in the city she lives in – Karachi – where an average of eight people are killed in assassinations and clashes between rival factions every day. "About 8pm there were two bomb blasts in Karachi and I'm so sad," she wrote in November. "Why [do] killers kill the people? Do they feel good after killing the people?"

Afrah Qureshi said Sara's father was incredulous at first, when she had a conversation with him in English. "You must have rote-learned this," he told his daughter, according to Qureshi. Now, he's proud of his daughter's English skills.

Aliya, a 13-year-old pupil, exuberantly wished Qureshi "Happy Malala Day, teacher!"

Aliya said she had been moved by reading Malala's diary. "I felt very bad that she wasn't allowed to study. It was only her parents who did a great service to her and helped her do so," she said.

"I love going to school," Aliya said. "My teacher is there, my friends are there. I get up early for school, and I'm even attending summer camp where I've taken every single class. I love studying."

She rattled off a list of things she wants to do when she's older, including going to one of the country's most prestigious private universities. "I want to take science subjects in class 9 and class 10, and then study computer science at LUMS [Lahore University of Management Sciences], and then I'm going to work for Teach for Pakistan!," she said, referring to the nationwide movement of graduates who volunteer to teach in under-resourced schools.

For many of these girls, there is little hope that they will ever get more than a secondary school certificate. Many are taken out of school when they are 14 to get married. In this community, there is no concept of women working, though that is changing in other Pashtun districts in Karachi. At a parent-teacher conference, Qureshi recalled a girl's father telling her that he was "very worried" about his daughter's future. "I see that she's so intelligent and I want to help her, but how?" he said.

Despite the challenges, Teach for Pakistan says these young girls are incredibly eager to learn, and spend their breaks in the classroom so they have an opportunity to closely engage with their teachers. The organisation's teaching fellows work with the communities and the parents – who they consider the biggest stakeholders – to ensure that they are all on board and involved with the girls' education. In Aliya and Sara's school, enrolment has nearly doubled this year as a result. More women are applying to work at Teach for Pakistan, which means that they can place more teachers in girls' schools.

Another entry by Sara recalls a conversation she had with her sister about what she wanted to do later in life. "Sometimes I think: what will I become? I like many professions like singer, actor, writer, teacher, poet whatever, but my most favourite is army ... If I cannot become something special, I want to become a good person."

*The names of pupils have been changed to protect their identity.

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Ofsted apologises to parents of girls abused by male pupils at special school

Ofsted's offices in London. One of its reports on Stanbridge Earls singled out safeguarding at the school for praise. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Ofsted has apologised to the parents of girls who were sexually abused by male pupils at a residential special school in Hampshire, and sacked inspection staff involved in three consecutive inspections of the school which an internal review has admitted contained judgments that were "not safe".

Inspections of Stanbridge Earls school for children with special educational needs were carried out in June 2011, January 2012 and May 2012. The third report picked out safeguarding at the school for special praise.

The regulator's internal review, however, concluded that there were "weaknesses in Ofsted's systems, structures, processes and practices which gave rise to the risk that safeguarding issues might not be fully addressed … In the case of Stanbridge Earls during the period in question, this risk materialised."

As a result of complaints by parents of female pupils regarding Ofsted's failure to protect their children from continuing abuse, the regulator has promised to completely overhaul the way inspections are managed so that serious safeguarding and child protection concerns are better understood, more swiftly reacted to and investigated with rigour.

From January next year, eight new Ofsted regions will be created to allow "a detailed understanding of provision in localities to be built up and intelligence to be gathered and used to best effect". An Ofsted-wide safeguarding group to review the way inspectors respond to serious allegations of abuse has already been set up. It is chaired by an independent social work professional with expertise in child protection and safeguarding "to ensure appropriate challenge and learning".

Although it is already mandatory for inspectors to familiarise themselves with any concerns that have been logged about an institution before arriving for an inspection, Ofsted also says it has improved existing technology so that staff can more easily access a full record of those concerns.

In addition, all school and social care inspectors will receive extra training in safeguarding and disability. And a detailed action plan to improve the way that Ofsted deals with reports of safeguarding concerns must be fully operational within 12 months.

Parents of pupils abused at the school have welcomed the changes, but say that they do not go far enough.

"We made it clear to Ofsted when we met that we wanted it to be mandatory for anyone with a professional responsibility for children to report allegations or suspicions of abuse," said the mother of Miss C, one of the girls who suffered repeated sexual assaults.

"That would mean that if you don't report abuse that you know is happening, or that you have a good idea is going on, then you would know you were acting illegally. You would know you could be prosecuted for breaking the law. It makes a teacher's duty very clear, and protects people who might be terrified of blowing the whistle on colleagues. If any member of staff at Stanbridge Earls had reported what they had suspected was going on sooner to the local authority for independent investigation, then my daughter and other people's daughters might never have gone through the horrendous trauma they experienced there, and which they are still suffering from."

Campaigners for a mandatory reporting law say that existing statutory guidance on when to report abuse in schools has repeatedly proved inadequate, and many thousands of children have suffered months and sometimes years of sexual abuse as a result.

Though the secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, has so far resisted calls for mandatory reporting, the Guardian has learned that his department will be holding a meeting of senior staff at the end of August to discuss what lessons should be learned from the comprehensive failures of all available safeguarding measures at Stanbridge Earls.

This will include the training and knowledge of Department for Education staff, the way the department handles complaints, communication between Ofsted and the department, and methods other than inspection evidence and reports for tracking a school's safeguarding history.

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