Where Was the Gender Gap in Private Upper-Secondary Enrolment Share Largest in 2024?

Do female and male upper-secondary students participate in private institutions at similar rates? UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) indicator ETOIP.3.PR.GPIA answers that question with an adjusted gender parity index. It does not report the private-enrolment percentage itself. Instead, it compares the percentage of female upper-secondary enrolment in private institutions with the corresponding percentage among male students.

The 2024 extract contains 77 country and area observations. Ten fall within the UIS parity band of 0.97–1.03, 30 are below 0.97 and 37 are above 1.03. The median is 1.017 and the unweighted mean is 1.001. The center is close to 1, but the country distribution includes several very large deviations.

This is not the female share among students in private schools

The denominator is the first key distinction. The underlying private-enrolment indicator measures the number of students enrolled in private educational institutions at a given level as a percentage of total enrolment at that level. For the gender parity index, that private share is calculated separately for female and male upper-secondary students and the two percentages are compared.

A GPIA of 0.8 therefore does not mean that 80% of students in private upper-secondary institutions are male. It indicates that the female private-enrolment share is lower than the male private-enrolment share. A value above 1 indicates the opposite direction: the female share of upper-secondary enrolment that is private is higher.

The index also does not provide the actual number of female or male students in private institutions. Total female and male upper-secondary enrolment can differ, so similar private-enrolment percentages can coexist with different student counts. GPIA is a parity measure built from percentages, not an enrolment headcount.

GPIA is centered on 1, with 0.97–1.03 used as the parity band

The conventional gender parity index divides the female indicator value by the male indicator value. Equality produces a value of 1. UIS uses an adjusted form so that disparities can be represented more symmetrically around 1 and the index remains bounded between 0 and 2.

UIS commonly interprets 0.97–1.03 as practical gender parity. Ten of the 77 observations are inside that interval. There are 35 values below 1, 41 above 1 and 1 exactly equal to 1.000 in the source data.

Because the adjusted transformation is applied when the female indicator exceeds the male indicator, a GPIA of 1.20 should not be converted into the statement that the female private-enrolment percentage is exactly 20% higher. The main information is the direction and the distance from the parity reference.

Sixty-seven of 77 observations fall outside the parity band

Thirty observations are below 0.97, indicating a lower female private-enrolment share relative to the male share. Thirty-seven are above 1.03, indicating a higher female share. Counting countries, the female-higher direction is slightly more common in this extract, but these are unweighted country observations rather than shares of the world’s students.

The first quartile is 0.905 and the third quartile is 1.142. There are 22 observations more than 0.20 away from 1 and 9 more than 0.30 away. A median near parity therefore coexists with a substantial number of country-level disparities.

The mean and median give each country or area one equal statistical weight. A country with millions of upper-secondary students and a small territory with a much smaller student population each contribute one GPIA value. The mean being near 1 must not be reinterpreted as near-perfect gender parity among all students worldwide.

The low and high extremes represent opposite directions of disparity

The minimum observation is Israel at 0.00036. Azerbaijan is 0.451, the Cook Islands 0.615, Egypt 0.646 and Georgia 0.683. These values point toward a lower female private-enrolment percentage than the male percentage. The source extract does not include the two underlying sex-specific percentages, so the absolute levels and student counts are not reconstructed.

At the high end, Austria is 1.421, Gibraltar 1.420, Barbados 1.396, Belarus 1.319 and Slovakia 1.243. Those observations point toward a higher female private-enrolment share. They do not mean that private institutions account for a larger share of total enrolment in those countries than in countries with a GPIA close to 1.

A country can have low private enrolment for both sexes and still show a large GPIA deviation if the two percentages differ sharply. Conversely, a country can have a large private sector for both sexes and still be near 1 when female and male private-enrolment shares are similar. Gender parity and the overall size of private education answer different questions.

Selected observations show the low, parity and high zones

The table below is not a private-education ranking. It selects observations from both sides of parity and from the parity band to illustrate how the index should be read. Values below 0.97 are labeled female-lower, 0.97–1.03 parity, and above 1.03 female-higher.

The Republic of Korea records 0.980, which lies inside the 0.97–1.03 parity band. This does not tell us the overall percentage of Korean upper-secondary students enrolled in private institutions. It only shows that the female and male private-enrolment percentages were relatively similar in the underlying 2024 observation.

Private does not necessarily mean for-profit or unsubsidized

UIS defines a private educational institution primarily by control and management. It is controlled and managed by a non-governmental organization or has a governing board whose members are mostly not selected by a public agency. Religious organizations, foundations, nonprofit bodies and businesses can all fall within private classifications.

Institutional control is not the same concept as funding source. A private institution may receive government funding, and a high private-enrolment share does not by itself reveal tuition levels or the financial burden on households. The gender parity index is even further removed from those questions because it compares female and male shares rather than the overall private-sector share.

National systems also differ in how upper-secondary programmes, vocational institutions, religious schools and government-dependent private institutions are structured. Small GPIA differences should therefore not be turned into a league table of privatization or access without additional country-specific context.

Israel’s extreme value requires the underlying indicator for fuller interpretation

Israel’s value of 0.00036 is an extreme outlier relative to the other 76 observations. Under the adjusted parity formula it points to a female underlying indicator far below the male indicator, but the extract does not include the two underlying private-enrolment percentages.

The index alone cannot tell us whether the extreme value reflects a very small female private-enrolment percentage, a distinctive institutional classification, a small denominator in a subgroup or another data context. It should not be automatically labeled a data error, but neither should a causal explanation be invented.

For that reason, the chart prints the values directly and includes the parity reference and parity-band boundaries. The important signal is distance and direction relative to 1, not the idea of a simple country ranking.

Small countries and territories remain in the statistics even when the map cannot show them

Of the 77 statistical observations, 66 match separate polygons in the low-resolution world boundary layer used here. The unmatched observations include Andorra, Bahrain, Barbados, the Cook Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Macao, Monaco, Mauritius and Seychelles.

Those observations remain in every summary statistic and table even when the map cannot display them as independent areas. Missing polygons are not equivalent to missing statistics, and neither is equivalent to a measured GPIA of zero.

The world map is therefore a spatial overview rather than a complete replacement for the underlying table. Small islands and separately reported territories are particularly likely to disappear in a low-resolution polygon layer.

One 2024 cross-section cannot establish a trend or a cause

All observations use the same 2024 reference year, which is an advantage for cross-country comparison. The index values are not mixed across different reporting years.

A one-year cross-section cannot show whether gender parity is improving or worsening in a country. That requires comparable values across several years. The dataset also cannot identify whether tuition, religious-school participation, location, household income, vocational programmes, school supply or policy causes the observed disparity.

GPIA identifies relative gender disparity in the underlying private-enrolment percentage. Causal explanation requires the sex-specific percentages, enrollment counts and country-specific institutional evidence.

Data source and calculation method

Country values come from UNESCO Institute for Statistics indicator ETOIP.3.PR.GPIA, “Percentage of enrolment in upper secondary education in private institutions, adjusted gender parity index (GPIA),” using the 2024 NATIONAL observations in this comparison. The supplied technical record labeled the unit as percent, but the observed values and the UIS parity methodology identify the series as a 0–2 adjusted GPIA. The completed public content uses the index interpretation.

• UNESCO UIS official API — ETOIP.3.PR.GPIA
• UNESCO UIS — adjusted parity index methodology
• UNESCO UIS — percentage of private enrolment definition
• UNESCO UIS — private educational institution definition

The mean 1.001, median 1.017, parity-band counts and distances from 1 are calculated directly from the 77 non-missing observations. Missing values are not zero-filled, and no sex-specific private-enrolment percentage or student count is estimated from the GPIA.

The strongest conclusion supported by this dataset is about how similarly or differently female and male upper-secondary students were distributed into private institutions in the 2024 observations. The overall private share, student volume, tuition, education quality, privatization and the causes of the gender differences require additional measures.

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