Compulsory education is the name given to the legally-required period of the time that children are expected to attend school. It makes every child share the right to receive the compulsory school. Obligation education is also called force education and free education.

The  earliest widespread adoption of compulsory education began with the Reformationin the 16th century under Martin Luther. One of the core tenets Luther  advocated was the ability for everyone to read the Bible themselves, so they could form their own opinion of the text, rather than be told what to believe by the Church.

Germany is the first country which has basically set up a comprehensive regulation oncompulsory education in 1819. After more than 100 years, compulsory educationhas been spread all around the world. More and more countries have built up laws about obligation education. It is a kind of index to evaluate whether acountry attaches attention on education and also partly affects a nation’s  literacy level.

It’s pleasant to see the number of countries without compulsory education diminished from 1999 to 2014. The result is calculated from the statistics of 209 countries. However, development of compulsory education varies from country to country. From the data of 209 countries in the world, there are still 22 countries without regulations on compulsory education. Among these 22 countries, half of them are African countries then five of them are Asian countries. The global popularization of education is still imbalanced, especially in African area.

As for the duration of compulsory education among 209 countries in 2014, we have the result as the bubble diagram above shows. Forty-seven countries set up a nine-year obligation education system, which take a highest proportion. Only four countries carry a fifteen-year compulsory education, Ecuador, Guatemala, Tonga and Venezuela respectively. Except Tonga situated in Oceania, the rest of three countries are located in Americas.

In most countries, children get a compulsory education from at the age of 6. Starting age of four countries with the longest duration mentioned above (Ecuador,Guatemala, Tonga and Venezuela) respectively are three, three, four and three yearsold. A conclusion comes out that a country of earlier starting age wouldestablish a longer duration of compulsory education.

China is conducting a nine-year compulsory education now, which was established in1864.The annual sessions of the NPC and CPPCC in March 2017, a few CPPCC members proposed popularization of twelve-year compulsory education across the country.This issue also aroused heated debates in society. From thestatistics of 209 countries, 99 countries have longer duration than China. To some extent, it reflects the development of Chinese obligation education is inan intermediate level and maybe some improvement should be put forward.