Book excerpt: Education is one of the most fundamental prerequisites to economic growth and social stability in the world. It is also one of the most inadequately realised goals of development, with the average education of global adults remaining essentially at primary levels. Advancing Global Education is the second in a series of volumes that explores prospects for human development-how development appears to be unfolding globally and locally, how we would like it to evolve, and how better to assure that we move it in desired directions. The first volume addressed the reduction of global poverty. The third will turn to the enhancement of global health. Advancing Global Education presents the most extensive set of forecasts of global education participation and attainment levels to date-providing and exploring a massive, multi-issue database and proposing a scenario for accelerating educational attainment throughout major world regions and 183 countries.