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CountryAtlas
Education · Capacity

Pupil-teacher ratio, primary

pupils per teacher · Annual · 206 of 218 countries (95 %) · 1970–2019
Ranking Download CSV
World median
20.3
across 90 countries, 2018
Latest observation
2019
Source updated
13 Jul 2026
CountryAtlas refreshed
11 Sep 2026
Snapshot 20260911T072322Z

World map

One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.

No data available

Trend

Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.

Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.

Highest and lowest

The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2018.

Full ranking →

Top 5

Bottom 5

Compare countries

Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.

No series for the selected countries.

Definition

Definition
Unit
pupils per teacher (pupils/teacher)
Frequency
Annual
Aggregation
none · Lower is better
Valid range
1 – 150

Sources & provenance

Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.

  1. Priority #1
    World BankWDISE.PRM.ENRL.TC.ZSok
    206 countries · 6,016 obs. · → 2019 · CC BY 4.0

    Primary school pupil-teacher ratio is the average number of pupils per teacher in primary school. Source: Stat Bulk Data Download Service, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), uri: https://uis.unesco.org/bdds, publisher: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)

    Open at source

Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.

Countries without data

Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.

Downloads & API

Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.

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API example

One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.

bash
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=pupil-teacher-ratio-primary" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'

API documentation →