Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Dataset · UIS
50 years, 1971–2024 · 77 countries · 3 measures
School life expectancy is the number of years of education, from primary to tertiary, that a child entering school today can expect to receive at current enrolment rates. It is UNESCO’s own version of the question UNDP’s expected years of schooling answers.
This site holds every year from 1971 to 2024, read from UIS’s own data and stored exactly as published.
School Life Expectancy · the file
0150 years
Newest first. Each opens the full table for that year, and each downloads as a CSV.
| Year | Countries | Change | Read | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| School Life Expectancy, 2024Newest | 77 | +16 −44 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2023 | 105 | +17 −15 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2022 | 103 | +10 −12 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2021 | 105 | +9 −9 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2020 | 105 | +7 −11 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2019 | 109 | +8 −12 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2018 | 113 | +8 −12 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2017 | 117 | +7 −7 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2016 | 117 | +11 −18 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2015 | 124 | +18 −10 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2014 | 116 | +20 −14 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
| School Life Expectancy, 2013 | 110 | +16 −26 | September 10, 2026 | CSV |
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: school-life-expectancy-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
025 columns
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2024 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 77 | 0 | |
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 77 | 0 | |
School life expectancy, primary to tertiary (years)school_life_expectancyHeadline | The headline figure: School life expectancy, primary to tertiary (years). | Number · up to 14 decimals | 7.478 | 77 | 0 | |
FemalefemaleWomen | The same measure, for women. | Number · up to 15 decimals | 7.675 | 77 | 0 | |
MalemaleMen | The same measure, for men. | Number · up to 14 decimals | 7.289 | 77 | 0 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the better result.
03205 countries across every year
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 22 | 26 | 25 | 19 | 20 | 14 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 12 | 12 | 9 |
| Americas | 21 | 23 | 26 | 20 | 17 | 17 | 17 | 15 | 14 | 15 | 17 | 12 |
| Asia | 32 | 31 | 31 | 35 | 36 | 38 | 35 | 33 | 36 | 35 | 34 | 25 |
| Europe | 34 | 35 | 40 | 40 | 42 | 42 | 41 | 41 | 40 | 38 | 38 | 25 |
| Oceania | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
| All | 110 | 116 | 124 | 117 | 117 | 113 | 109 | 105 | 105 | 103 | 105 | 77 |
The newest 12 of 50 years.
UIS gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
04Provenance
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
2 · Their file
School Life Expectancy 2024
3 · Read by this site
September 10, 2026
4 · Stored as
50 files, one per year
5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored to 14 decimals, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
From the UNESCO Institute for Statistics data API. Years reporting fewer than 50 countries are left out. Female and male figures are stored beside the headline.
05Reuse
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 5, 2026
Share, adapt and use commercially with credit — and anything you publish that adapts it must carry the same licence.
A credit line
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), School Life Expectancy, via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). School Life Expectancy, 1971–2024 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/school-life-expectancy
The publisher’s own citation: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. UIS Data Browser. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.
06Where it is used
Where these numbers appear on this site, and the datasets nearest to it.
Charted
School Life Expectancy by countryWho is highest, the map, the spread, who rose and fell, and the records.
Subjects
Near neighbours
07Questions
School life expectancy is the number of years of education, from primary to tertiary, that a child entering school today can expect to receive at current enrolment rates. It is UNESCO’s own version of the question UNDP’s expected years of schooling answers.
All 50, from 1971 to 2024, each as a CSV file, or every year together in one CSV.
No. UIS publishes values only. The positions shown on this site are derived by ordering the published values, and are labelled as ours.
Yes, under CC BY-SA 4.0, with credit to UIS. The licence text is linked on this page.