Share of primary schools with access to drinking water
What you should know about this indicator
- Safe drinking water is essential for a healthy learning environment — this indicator shows how many primary schools provide students with access to clean water.
- It measures the percentage of primary schools that have access to basic drinking water services, meaning water from an improved source that is available on school grounds or within a short walking distance.
- Improved sources include piped water, boreholes, protected wells or springs, rainwater, or packaged/tank water that meets national safety standards.
- A high value reflects adequate infrastructure for supporting health, hygiene, and student well-being, which are essential for school participation and performance.
- The data is typically collected through school censuses or education management information systems (EMIS) and is reported by school administrators or district education offices.
- This indicator can be disaggregated by location (urban/rural), public/private management, or region to identify equity gaps in access to basic services across schools.
- In some contexts, data may rely on school-reported access, without verifying water quality or availability throughout the year.
- While access alone does not guarantee regular availability or safety, this measure is a key starting point for understanding school readiness to support children’s health and learning needs.
More Data on Global Education
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of primary schools with access to drinking water”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of primary schools with access to drinking water” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.html (archived on March 4, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-primary-schools-with-access-to-potable-water.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear