Teenage pregnancy is a complex social issue often caused by human rights violations such as gender-based violence against girls, child marriage, lack of access to sexual and reproductive health services, and lack of access to education. Often these violations happen to the most marginalised girls, particularly girls with disabilities, girls living in poverty, and girls living in rural areas.

As emphasised by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, promoting gender equality perspectives and elimination of any gender-stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education is crucial to eliminate structural forms of gender discrimination rooted in prejudices and customary practices. This indicator is to assess if content on gender equality is integrated into the different levels of education and if non-stereotypical educational curricula are developed.

This indicator examines whether children from a particular marginalised community have equal access to education. Marginalised groups include women and girls, Indigenous peoples and minorities, persons with disabilities, persons with HIV / AIDS, child labourers, persons in detention, migrants, refugees and IDPs, and persons living in poverty.     

This is the SDG. 4.2.1 indicator that tracks the progress made to SDG target 4.2. Which is 'by 2030, ensure all boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’.

As per the SDG definition, this refers to the proportion of children aged 24 to 59 months who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psycho-social well-being, and it includes the following concepts :

The participation rate in pre-primary education refers to the percentage of children who participated in at least one year of pre-primary education before primary school enrolment.

This indicator assesses whether the State has adopted laws and/or policies to guarantee the right to education of girls and women, including the provision of the necessary equipment and support to enable female students to attend school, including ECCE centres, without any discrimination.     

The right to equality and non-discrimination are core human rights and the basis for ensuring the right to education for all. The international human rights legal framework contains international instruments to combat specific forms of discrimination.

Affirmative actions should be understood as targeted temporary actions aiming to facilitate access, participation, and completion of marginalised groups that are underrepresented in different levels of education.