According to the UN Children’ s Fund, how many children of primary school age we

The UN Children’s Fund estimates that nearly 72 million children of primary school age were not enrolled in school in 2007. More than half of those not in school are girls, and more than two-thirds of them are in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia.
    In the last decade, enrollment has increased and the gender gap in schools has closed in many regions, but UNICEF’s Executive Director, Anthony Lake, says there is still much work to be done.
    Lake is one of 200 scholars, government officials, civil society workers and development partners in Dakar this week for a conference organized by the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, an international partnership aimed at achieving gender equality and universal primary school education by 2015.
    UNICEF’s Lake said even in Senegal, where the number of public schools has doubled in the last decade, there is still work to be done to achieve gender equality in schools.
    He said girls in one Dakar school explained to him some of the daily challenges they face, such as the lack of bathrooms in the school, bullying from boys, and a lack of textbooks.
    At the week-long conference, participants are focusing on three primary roadblocks to getting and keeping girls in school: violence, poverty and the poor quality of education being offered.
    Though school enrollment has increased in recent years, experts say improved access to education must go hand-in-hand with improved quality.