A campaign group has ranked South Sudan as the toughest place in the world for girls to get an education.

The report comes as the world marks the girls’ education day.

This Year’s Theme, Empower girls before, during and after crises, aims to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face.

The ranking by the ONE campaign is based on the proportion of girls without access to schools, the average number of years girls attend school and the female illiteracy rate.

Other factors are teacher-pupil ratio and public spending on education.

The campaign group says 73% of girls in South Sudan do not go to primary school and the government spends just 2.6% of its total budget on education.

South Sudan is followed by the Central African Republic and Niger on the toughest place in the world for girls to get an education index.

On marking the girls’ education day, some girls in Juba have called for action to improve the environment in which girls learn.

The Director-General for planning and budgeting in the Ministry of General Education acknowledged access to education as major a challenge to a girl child in the country.

“As a ministry of education, we are fighting very hard to ensure that by the end of our strategic sector plan that we have developed and we are now implementing which is 2021, we should have forgotten about gender disparity in South Sudan,” said George Mogga.

The ONE campaign said over 130 million girls didn’t go to school today and nearly half a billion women worldwide still cannot read.