Schools in Somalia in numbers: enrolment, attendance and literacy

Where the numbers come from

• The household survey (SIHBS 2022): 7,212 households in 17 regions, run by the Somali National Bureau of Statistics. It asks families who can read and who goes to school, so it counts children who are not in school too (SNBS, SIHBS 2022).
• School counts: the federal Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education counts pupils in the schools it reaches, published in the bureau's yearly Facts and Figures (SNBS, Somalia Facts and Figures 2024). These counts do not include Puntland or Somaliland, which run their own school systems and yearbooks.
• International series: the UNESCO Institute for Statistics publishes literacy, completion and enrolment figures from these and older sources, back to the 1970s (UNESCO UIS data, Somalia).

Who can read and write

Share of people aged 15 and over who can read and write, 2022 (SIHBS 2022, Table 3.1):

• Everyone 15 and over: 53.7 percent.
• Men: 63.6 percent. Women: 45.3 percent.
• Young people 15 to 24: 70.3 percent. Ages 15 to 19: 75.1 percent of young men and 69.9 percent of young women.
• Towns: 60.9 percent. Villages: 49.1 percent. Nomadic families: 20.5 percent.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics puts youth literacy in 2022 at 76.2 percent for young men and 65.1 percent for young women, up from 23.8 percent for young women in 2006 (UNESCO UIS, LR.AG15T24).

Nearly two in three Somalis (65.5 percent) have no formal schooling, and 4 percent have higher education. Among nomadic families, 92.5 percent have no formal schooling (SIHBS 2022).

Who is in school

From the 2022 survey (SIHBS 2022, Table 3.3):

• Primary (ages 6 to 13): 25.0 percent of children of this age attend primary school. In nomadic families it is 5.2 percent.
• Secondary: 14.6 percent of children of secondary age attend secondary school.
• Older pupils: counting pupils of any age, attendance is 39.0 percent for primary and 28.5 percent for secondary. Many children start late or repeat years.
• Getting there: 92.2 percent of primary pupils and 85.1 percent of secondary pupils walk to school.

UNESCO estimates that 49.8 percent of young people completed primary school in 2023, up from 31.9 percent in 2006. For lower secondary it was 47.9 percent, up from 22.7 percent (UNESCO UIS, CR.1 and CR.2).

Pupils counted in schools, 2024/25

Primary pupils by region, federal ministry count (SNBS Facts and Figures 2024, Table 1.1):

• Banadir: 240,373
• Lower Shabelle: 61,341
• Hiiraan: 58,475
• Galgaduud: 50,133
• Bay: 48,124
• Lower Juba: 44,091
• Gedo: 40,752
• Middle Shabelle: 34,923
• Mudug: 24,104
• Sool: 23,307
• Bakool: 13,493
• Cayn: 5,617
• Total: 644,904, of whom 45.8 percent are girls.

Secondary pupils numbered 201,697, of whom 42.3 percent are girls. Banadir alone has 116,271 secondary pupils, more than half the total (same source, Table 1.5).

Private and public: about half of primary pupils are in private schools (50.6 percent in 2025), down from 56.3 percent in 2020. In Banadir 85 percent of primary pupils are in private schools; in Bakool, Gedo and Cayn more than 90 percent are in public schools (same source, Tables 1.2 and 1.4).

Growth: the ministry's primary count rose from 317,604 in 2020 to 566,069 in 2025 (same source, Table 1.4).

The bureau's tables do not all agree. Table 1.1 gives 644,904 primary pupils and Table 1.2 gives 566,069 for the same year; the teacher table jumps from 19,570 in 2022 to 160,625 in 2023. We show each figure with its table so readers can check.

The long view

UNESCO's records show primary enrolment, counting pupils of any age against the primary-age population, rising from 6.9 percent in 1971 to 31.8 percent in 1977, during the years after Somali was first written in 1972 and the literacy campaigns of 1973 to 1975. It fell to 13.8 percent by 1986 (UNESCO UIS, GER.1). See The Somali language is written, 1972.

Related

• Exam results
• Universities in Somalia
• Scholarships