Eastern Europe

Experts situated in Region

None

Regional overview

Eastern Europe is defined for VISCED purposes as the countries of the former Commonwealth of Independent States that are mainly or partially in Europe, as judged by cultural as well as geographic frontiers. Thus in particular the countries of Transcaucasia are all included but Kazakhstan is not.

The complete list (including partially recognised countries) is:

1. Abkhazia
2. Armenia
3. Azerbaijan
4. Belarus
5. Georgia
6. Moldova
7. Nagorno-Karabakh
8. Russia
9. South Ossetia
10. Ukraine

For other groupings of some or all of these countries see Transcaucasia and CIS.

See also the Re.ViCa categories Category:Transcaucasian countries and Category:European former CIS

Education in Region

In Eastern Europe, many countries have achieved universal primary education, literacy rates are high, gender gaps in primary and secondary education are small, and enrollment rates in pre-primary education have increased significantly over the past two decades. In 2008, participation in pre-primary education increased 9% since 1999. However, the regional gross enrollment ratio of 66% indicates that many children are still excluded from pre-primary education in 2008. Over the past decade, progress towards universal primary education has been uneven across Eastern Europe. While many countries have relatively high primary enrollment rates, in some the numbers of children not enrolled are increasing. Despite demographic changes due to declining fertility rates, the regional primary adjusted net enrolment ratios remained about the same over the decade to stand at an average of 94% in 2008. Almost all countries in the region demonstrate improvements in the numbers of children out of school (at an average 32% compared to 1999). However, trend analysis provides insights into plausible scenarios for the numbers of children out of school in 2015. In Romania, for example, a continuation to 2015 of the trend from 1999 to 2008 would see the out-of-school number increase by 70% to 51,300.

Despite a significant decline in the size of the secondary school age population in Eastern Europe, the region’s secondary gross enrollment ratio has increased by only 1% since 1999, to reach 88% in 2008. Participation levels remained relatively low in some countries in the region, with gross enrollment ratio at 85% in the Russian Federation, for instance. Secondary school attendance and completion are strongly influenced by poverty, location and gender. Among 23 to 27-year-olds in Armenia, those from the wealthiest 20% of households have a secondary completion rate of 34%, compared with 8% for the poorest 20%. In Ukraine, the urban poor are 1.7 times as likely to complete secondary school as the rural poor.

In Eastern Europe, the growth of students who were enrolled in tertiary education in 2008 was up by more than two-thirds since 1999, and the region’s general enrollment ration rose from 38% in 1999 to 64% in 2008.

References

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