Education in Angola has six years of compulsory education, under the Angolan Education Law (13/01) of 31 December 2001. Basic adult literacy continues to be low, but there are conflicting figures from government and other sources. It is difficult to assess literacy and education needs. According to 2015 estimates, the literacy rate in Angola is 71.1% (82% male and 60.7% female). On the other hand, the university system has been developing considerably over the last decade.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) finds that Angola achieved only 36.7% of what was possible at its income level to ensure that the right to education was being fulfilled, with such a score labeling the country's performance as being in the "very bad" range. HRMI breaks down the right to education by looking at the rights to both primary education and secondary education. While taking into consideration Angola's income level, Angola is doing only 61.4% of what should be possible for primary education and only 12.0% for secondary education.

African access to educational opportunities was highly limited for most of the colonial period. Many rural Angolan populations of the vast countryside retained their native culture and language and were not able to speak nor understand Portuguese. In mainland Portugal, the homeland of the colonial authorities who ruled Angola from the 16th century until 1975, by the end of the 19th century the illiteracy rates were at over 80 percent and higher education was reserved for a small percentage of the population as well. 68.1 percent of mainland Portugal's population was still classified as illiterate by the 1930 census. Mainland Portugal's literacy rate by the 1940s and early 1950s was low for North American and Western European standards at the time. Only in the mid-1960s did the country make public education available for all children between the ages of six and twelve, and the overseas territories profited from this new education developments and change in policy at Lisbon.

In Angola, until the 1950s, facilities run by the government were few for such a large territory and restricted to the urban areas. Responsibility for educating Africans rested with Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. As a consequence, each of the missions established its own school system, and the children were educated in Portuguese language and culture. This centuries-long missionary educational endeavor in Portuguese Angola was subject to Portuguese coordination with pedagogical and organizational matters. Education beyond the primary level was available to very few black Africans before 1960, and the proportion of the age group that went on to secondary school in the early 1970s was quite low compared to the white Angolans (as well as comparing urban versus rural Angolans of all ethnicities). Nevertheless, primary school attendance was growing substantially.

In general, the quality of teaching at the primary level was reasonable, despite the fact that sometimes instruction was carried on largely by Africans with very few qualifications. Most secondary school teachers were Portuguese. In 1962, the first university established in Angola was founded by the Portuguese authorities — Estudos Gerais Universitários de Angola. This first Angolan university awarded a range of degrees from engineering to medicine. In 1968, it was renamed Universidade de Luanda (“University of Luanda”).

The conflict between the Portuguese military and the nationalist guerrillas, the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974), did not damage effectively this strong education growth started in the late 1950s. However, the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) that ensued after independence left the education system in chaos and the progress achieved in the last two decades was seriously damaged. With the independence and the eruption of the civil war, most Portuguese had left (including virtually all secondary school staff), many buildings had been damaged, and availability of instructional materials was limited.

A report of the First Party Congress published in December 1977 gave education high priority. The government estimated the level of illiteracy following independence at between 85 percent and 90 percent and set the elimination of illiteracy as an immediate task. By 1985, after a major literacy campaign, the average rate of adult literacy was officially estimated at 59 percent; United States government sources, however, estimated literacy at only 20 percent. At independence there were 25,000 primary school teachers, but fewer than 2,000 were even minimally qualified to teach primary school children. The shortage of qualified instructors was more pronounced at the secondary school level, where there were only 600 teachers. Furthermore, secondary schools existed only in towns. The First Party Congress responded to this problem by resolving to institute an eight-year compulsory system of free, basic education for children between ages seven and fifteen.

School enrollment, which rose very slowly considering Angola's youthful population, reflected the dire effects of the insurgency. In 1977 the government reported that more than 1 million primary school students were enrolled, as were about 105,000 secondary school students, roughly double the numbers enrolled in 1973. What proportions of the relevant age groups these students constituted was not known. In the case of the primary school students, it may have been almost two-thirds; in that of secondary school students, it was perhaps a tenth to an eighth. Official government statistics released in 1984 showed that primary school enrollment had declined to 870,410, while secondary school enrollment (including vocational school and teacher training students) had increased to 151,759. This made for combined primary and secondary school enrollment consisting of 49 percent of the school-age population. By 1986 the primary school enrollment had increased to 1,304,145.