On 1 January 2006, the world will wake up to a deadline missed. The Millennium Development Goal - gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2005 - will remain unmet. What is particularly disheartening is that this was a realistic deadline and a reachable goal. The tragedy of this failure is that an unthinkable number of children, the majority of whom are girls, have been abandoned to a bleak future. The GAP report, a multimedia project, is more than a wake-up call. Building on what people who work in development and education know and understand, it is designed to assess progress towards universal primary education, highlight innovations, identify obstacles, generate discussion and provide guidance. GAP begins at the point of agreed upon and established assessments and ends with a concrete action plan.