Share of students achieving minimum reading proficiency by the end of primary education
What you should know about this indicator
- This indicator measures the share of children or students who achieve minimum proficiency in reading or mathematics by the end of a given education level (primary or lower secondary).
- Minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics is defined differently at each education level.
- At the end of primary education, minimum reading proficiency means students can identify key ideas in simple texts and connect them to their own experiences. In mathematics, it means demonstrating number sense and computation, basic measurement, interpreting simple graphs, spatial orientation, and number patterns.
- At the end of lower secondary, minimum reading proficiency means students can connect ideas across different types of texts, understand the author’s intent, and draw conclusions based on the text. In mathematics, it means applying computation skills, solving real-world problems, interpreting graphs and tables, and using algebraic representations.
- There are two types of estimates: one for all children in the age group, and one for students who are enrolled in school.
- Estimates for all children adjust for school completion and enrollment, offering a full population-level view — including those who dropped out or were never enrolled.
- Estimates for students reflect outcomes only among those still in school at the end of the education cycle.
- Data comes from international assessments such as TIMSS, PIRLS, or PISA, combined with completion and enrollment data from surveys or statistical models.
Related research and writing
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.
Reuse this work
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 students achieving minimum reading proficiency by the end of primary education”, 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/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.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 students achieving minimum reading proficiency by the end of primary education” [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/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.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/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.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/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.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/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-at-end-of-primary-education-achieving-minimum-reading-proficiency.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear