Mean Years of Schooling 2012

Report year 2012·Data year 2012

Mean years of schooling (adults 25+)·Higher is better — rank 1 leads·Published by UNDP Human Development Report Office

34 reference years (1990–2023), 152 to 193 countries. The average number of years of schooling actually completed by adults aged 25 and over — the BACKWARD-LOOKING half of the HDI’s education dimension, and the one that changes slowest, because it can only move as fast as the population turns over. Read it with `expected-years-schooling`, which says what today’s children can expect rather than what today’s adults got. ⚠ Not 34 published editions: the 2025 Human Development Report recalculates every year on one methodology. UNDP publishes no rank for it, so none is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the score and labelled as ours. The deepest tie in 2023 is two countries, 1.0% of the field.

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