International Education Day is celebrated on 24 January to celebrate the role of education in promoting peace and development.
International Education Day 2025: History and Significance
The United Nations General Assembly declared January 24 to be the International Day of Education on December 3, 2018, in an effort to raise awareness of the importance and accessibility of education for everyone.
The Right to Education is a universal declaration of human rights that promotes free and compulsory elementary education. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, stated that higher education should be made accessible to all in all countries.
In 2015, the United Nations established the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, which acknowledged education as a critical component of achieving the 17 goals. The specific objective of Sustainable Development Goal 4 is to “promote lifelong learning opportunities for all and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education by 2030.”
Approximately 244 million children and adolescents worldwide have not attended school due to a variety of obstacles in achieving their educational goals. According to data, four million children and youth refugees are not attending school, about 617 million children and adolescents are illiterate, and less than 40% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa complete lower secondary school. “Without inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, countries will not succeed in achieving gender equality and breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth, and adults behind.”
International Day of Education 2025: This year’s theme
The theme for the 2025 International Day of Education is “AI and education: Preserving human agency in a world of automation.” “As computer and AI-driven systems become more sophisticated, the boundaries between human intention and machine-driven action often blur, raising critical questions about how to preserve, redefine, and, ideally, elevate human agency in an age of technological acceleration,” a statement reads.
A “global discussion on the place of this technology within education” is the goal of UNESCO’s Artificial Intelligence Day.
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