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According to estimation by the Population Division of the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the Asia-Pacific region’s population has increased from 3.7 billion in 2000 to 4.5 billion in 2018 and will be 4.9 billion by 2030. Among the total population, school age population (5-17 years) constitutes almost 20.9 per cent (2015), even though such proportion is a drop from 22.1 per cent in 2010 and is projected to further drop to 18 per cent by 2030. However, in pre-demographic dividend1 countries such as Afghanistan, the share of children in the total population is still growing because of high fertility rate, putting pressure on the public system for delivery of services like health and education. In addition, there is a significant proportion of the economically active population (around 57 per cent) in the region who will require continuous upskilling in order to keep up with the rapidly changing labour market and technological advances. To this effect, there will be increasing need for countries to expand provisions of post-basic education and skills development through specialized training and lifelong learning provisions, while there continues to be a need also to increase the quality of basic education.

According to estimation by the Population Division of the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the Asia-Pacific region’s population has increased from 3.7 billion in 2000 to 4.5 billion in 2018 and will be 4.9 billion by 2030. Among the total population, school age population (5-17 years) constitutes almost 20.9 per cent (2015), even though such proportion is a drop from 22.1 per cent in 2010 and is projected to further drop to 18 per cent by 2030. However, in pre-demographic dividend1 countries such as Afghanistan, the share of children in the total population is still growing because of high fertility rate, putting pressure on the public system for delivery of services like health and education. In addition, there is a significant proportion of the economically active population (around 57 per cent) in the region who will require continuous upskilling in order to keep up with the rapidly changing labour market and technological advances. To this effect, there will be increasing need for countries to expand provisions of post-basic education and skills development through specialized training and lifelong learning provisions, while there continues to be a need also to increase the quality of basic education.

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Environment and Development Division +66 2 288 1234 [email protected]