The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, we test whether there has been an increase inindicators of educational attainment and/or an acceleration in progress towards goals setby the Education for All (EFA)-movement in 2000. Second, we project progress towardsuniversal achievement of these targets. The indicators considered in both tasks are thefraction of a cohort that has ever been to school, the primary school completion rate, and thelower secondary completion rate. Our results indicate that progress towards education goalshas seen a large boost that benefited cohorts that were affected from policies implementedc. 2000. We estimate that an additional 34m children born before 2010 will eventually gainaccess to education that would not do so had previous trends continued. While in mostcountries, cohorts that will attain universal access have already been born, our projectionsalso suggest that, on average over all countries, universal completion of lower secondary willonly be attained by cohorts born after 2050 in most regions.