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World Bank · Education

Compulsory education, duration

Duration of compulsory education is the number of years that children are legally obliged to attend school.

Coverage
197 of 238 countries
Latest data
2025
Series
197
Unit
years
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
2026-11-05
Indicator
compulsory-education-duration
Interva ID
worldbank-compulsory-education-duration

Recency

current

data to 2025; catalog to 2025

Provenance

2 steps

as the publisher declares it

Versions

1

catalog snapshots

Citation

BibTeX + CSL

versioned permalink

Quality profile

This profile describes what Interva can measure in the data. It does not claim the dataset is accurate, complete, or suitable for a particular use.

Recency

100%

Latest observation is 2025; the catalog broadly reports to 2025, so this data is 0 year(s) behind (current).

Method: Compares the dataset's latest non-projected period with the year most datasets in the catalog end in. Up to 2 years behind is current — annual data is routinely published a year or two late — and more than 5 is stale. Measured from the data, not from when Interva last crawled it.

Temporal completeness

100%

4 of 197 series skip at least one year inside their own span; the median series reports 100% of its years.

Method: Per series, years present divided by years from its first to its last observation; the median across series is reported. Annual periods are assumed, which holds for every series in the catalog today.

Geographic coverage

Measured

Covers 197 of the 238 countries in the catalog.

Method: Counts distinct geographies with at least one observation. Not scored: a regional dataset covering its region completely is not deficient for omitting the rest of the world.

History depth

Measured

The median series has 28 observations; the earliest begins in 1975.

Method: Counts non-projected observations per series. Not scored: a long history is useful for trend work and irrelevant for a cross-section.

Revisions

Measured

No observation has been restated in any vintage Interva has recorded.

Method: Counts values the publisher changed between Interva's publishes. Not scored: revising estimates is ordinary and often a sign of care, and the count is here so a reader citing a figure knows whether it moves.

Schema conformity

Not assessed

No declared schema or validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Validity

Not assessed

No field-level validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Consistency

Not assessed

Cross-series consistency rules are not defined yet. The obvious first one — whether two publishers measuring one concept agree within a stated tolerance — is a candidate.

2 scored from the data, 3 described without a score, 3 not assessed. Pipeline integrity: all 5 checks pass. Assessed 2026-11-07.

By country

Compulsory education, duration for each of the 197 countries it covers, with the full history.

Latest observations

CountryPeriodValueUnit
Afghanistan20259years
Albania20259years
Algeria202510years
Andorra202510years
Angola202510years
Antigua and Barbuda202511years
Argentina202514years
Armenia202512years
Aruba202513years
Australia202511years

Provenance

Who produced these figures, as World Bank declares it — not inferred, and each line says which published field it was read from.

  1. Produced by

    UNESCO

    Data API, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), uri: https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources, note: The data are obtained through the UIS API. Detailed documentation is available at: https://api.uis.unesco.org/api/public/documentation/, publisher: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), date accessed: 2026-03-19, date published: 2026-02

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

  2. Read from

    World Bank

    World Development Indicators

    declared by worldbank in source

Versions

A vintage is a dated publish of the catalog. The current entry is a catalog snapshot; checksums are not recorded yet and are shown as such.

  • CurrentCurrent catalog snapshotchecksum not recorded

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Citation

Version: catalog snapshot 2026-11-05. The record labels this as a catalog snapshot because immutable dataset releases are not stored yet.

World Bank (2026). Compulsory education, duration. Interva. https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration (accessed 2026-11-07). catalog snapshot 2026-11-05.

BibTeX
@misc{interva-worldbank-compulsory-education-duration,
  title        = {Compulsory education, duration},
  author       = {World Bank},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration}},
  note         = {Interva dataset worldbank-compulsory-education-duration; catalog snapshot 2026-11-05},
  urldate      = {2026-11-07}
}

DOI: not assigned (not assigned). The permalink is versioned by catalog snapshot; a stable dataset DOI is a later step.

API access

Every fact on this page is available from the API.

curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration
curl -o worldbank-compulsory-education-duration.csv https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration/download
curl "https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration/citation?accessed=YYYY-MM-DD"
curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-compulsory-education-duration/quality

Full schema: https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/docs

Open in the terminal to chart this series, compare it against other publishers, or export it with its provenance.

Compulsory education, duration · World Bank · Interva