Across the world some 123 million children, including 66 million girls, are being left out from class rooms and absence from schools was adversely affecting their health and abetting exploitation, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said. "This month millions of families will not share in the pride of sending their children off to school," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said on Tuesday. "Ignoring the children who are not in school translates into huge losses to this generation and the next" and "far beyond the child losing the direct benefits of education, absence from school puts children closer to the threat of disease, abuse and sexual exploitation. This is especially so for girls," Bellamy said. "This is a disheartening reality in a world where education is the right of every child," she said. In sub-Saharan Africa, 46 million school-aged children have never stepped into a school, a figure that has risen steadily every year since 1990, UNICEF said. Another 46 million south-Asian youngsters are not in school. These two regions account for three-quarters of the world's entire population of children who are not in school. Two per cent of the global out-of-school population, about 2.5 million children, live in industrialised countries, she said. Globally, some 66 million girls of school-age are not in school. While the gender gap in enrolment has narrowed over the last decade, girls are still the ones most often denied their right to education, and those who do attend drop out earlier, UNICEF added. [Source: PTI]