This report, commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat for the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2009, explores progress towards achieving good quality basic education for all.

Section A describes briefly the composition and the diversity of the Commonwealth before providing two short overviews on trends and significant advances in basic education across all of the countries of the Commonwealth and regional trends and patterns for Commonwealth Asia, Commonwealth Sub-Saharan Africa, the Commonwealth Caribbean and the Commonwealth Pacific.

Section B presents data for each Commonwealth country in graphical and diagrammatic form, contrasting wherever possible, the state of basic education in 1999 with the latest available statistics. Particular attention is paid to pre-primary education, Universal Primary Education (UPE), progress towards higher levels of adult literacy, gender parity and equality and some proxy indicators of better quality in basic education.