In today's increasingly globalized world, with its rising disparities in income distribution, where 60 per cent of the world's population live on only 6 per cent of the world's income, half of the world's population lives on two dollars a day and over one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, 'poverty is a threat to peace'. Poverty and other factors contributing to exclusion seriously affect education. While progress is being made towards the Education for All (EFA) goals and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as demonstrated by the drop in numbers of out-of-school children and increasing enrolment rates, there is now a stronger focus on those learners who are still out of school or are hard to reach. More attention is also being paid to the many children and young people who attend school but who are excluded from learning, who may not complete the full cycle of primary education or who do not receive an education of good quality.