Number of pupils in the official age group for a given level of education who attend school at that level expressed as a percentage of the population in that age group.
Recent cross-national compilations of net attendance rates (NAR) from more than 100 household surveys in forty-six countries throw new light on rural/urban disparities (Education Policy and Data Center,2007c; López et al., 2007). In thirty-two of the forty countries with the relevant survey data, net attendance rates in urban areas were found to be higher than those in rural areas, the rural/urban ratio being below 0.97. In seven other countries, the rural and urban attendance rates were nearly at parity (between 0.98 and 1.02), and in Bangladesh, the rural rate was higher than the urban one (UNESCO, 2008: 46).