The South Asia Out-of-School Children Initiative (OOSCI) is part of the global initiative launched by UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) in 2010. The goal of the initiative is to make significant and sustained reduction in the number of out-of-school children around the world by 1) developing comprehensive profiles of excluded children using consistent and innovative statistical methods; 2) linking these profiles to the barriers and bottlenecks that lead to exclusion; and 3) identifying, promoting and implementing sound policies that address exclusion from a multi-sectorial perspective.