A so-called ‘fact sheet’ on education in Nigeria published by UNESCO in October 2012 suggests that Nigeria has some of the worst education indicators in the developing world. For example, since 1999, the number of out-of-school children has increased from 7.4 to 10.5 million, which means that Nigeria now has the largest number of out‐of‐school children in the world. Unfortunately, these statistics fail to take into account the thousands of unregistered low cost private schools that exist across Nigeria and the millions of children who attend these schools. Consider, for example, the following findings from a census of private schools in Lagos State carried out by DFID in 2010-2011:
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