Share of the population aged 25+ years with lower secondary education
What you should know about this indicator
- This indicator shows what portion of the adult population (aged 25 and above) has attained at least a lower secondary level of education.
- It is calculated by dividing the number of adults who have completed at least lower secondary education by the total population in the same age group, and multiplying by 100.
- Lower secondary education typically corresponds to ages 12 to 15 or 16.
- The 25+ age group is used because most people have completed their formal education by this age, making it a reliable population for tracking educational attainment.
- The data come from national censuses, labour force surveys, or other household surveys, and are usually mapped to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) after data collection.
- There are important limitations to consider. Comparisons across countries may be affected by differences in how qualifications are mapped to ISCED levels, and some educational programmes may not be easily classified.
- In addition, the indicator reflects only the level of education completed — not the quality of education or whether the person uses their qualification in the labour market.
More Data on Global Education
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
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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 the population aged 25+ years with lower secondary 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-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.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 the population aged 25+ years with lower secondary 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-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.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-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.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-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.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-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-at-least-some-secondary-education.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear