The cohort survival rate measures an education system's holding power and internal efficiency. Rates approaching 100 percent indicate high retention and low dropout levels.
Persistence to last grade of primary, total (% of cohort)
The estimates have limitations in capturing real trend in that an observed rate will be applied to the underlying indicators such as repetition rate and promotion rate throughout the cohort life, and re-entrants, grade skipping, migration or transfers during a school year are not adequately captured.
Persistence to last grade of primary is the percentage of children enrolled in the first grade of primary school who eventually reach the last grade of primary education. The estimate is based on the reconstructed cohort method.
Cohort survival rate is calculated by dividing the total number of children belonging to a cohort who reached each successive grade of the specified level of education by the number of children in the same cohort; those originally enrolled in the first grade of primary education, and multiplying by 100. To reflect current patterns of grade transition, it is calculated based on the reconstructed cohort method, which uses data on enrollment by grade for the two most recent years and data on repeaters by grade for the most recent of those two years. 
Data on education are collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics from official responses to its annual education survey. All the data are mapped to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) to ensure the comparability of education programs at the international level. The current version was formally adopted by UNESCO Member States in 2011. 

The reference years reflect the school year for which the data are presented. In some countries the school year spans two calendar years (for example, from September 2010 to June 2011); in these cases the reference year refers to the year in which the school year ended (2011 in the example).