Primary schooling is almost universal, and today

Yeah.. same question.. can someone please clarify?

Primary schooling is almost universal, today, three out of four children are enrolled in pre- and secondary school.

A) Primary schooling is almost universal, today, three out of four children are enrolled in pre- and secondary school. - 2 Independent clauses are connected without any connector, leading to Run-on. Hence Incorrect.
B) Three out of four children are enrolled in both pre- and secondary school and it is almost universal today. - What is the Antecedent of IT...? Antecedent of IT is "Primary Schooling", but this noun is nowhere present in the sentence. Hence Incorrect.
C) Today, primary schooling is almost universal, and three out of four children are enrolled in both pre- and secondary school. - This option changes the original intent a little bit, but Best option out of the rest.
D) Today, primary school is almost universal, and three out of four children enrolled are in it. - Alters the original intent altogether. Author is talking about PRIMARY SCHOOLING and not PRIMARY SCHOOL. Hence Incorrect.
E) Primary schooling is universal today, almost three out of four children are enrolled in pre- and secondary school. - 2 Independent clauses are connected without any connector, leading to Run-on. Hence Incorrect.

I agree with your logic. This option changes the original intent a tad bit.

all the choices except D, seem to imply that 3 out 4 children are enrolled in both the classes....
Therefore D, though that goes out of the line/ implied context of the sentence.
This way none of the choices seem correct.

Yeah, this one needs some repairs. I looked at the source Economist article, and it does indeed say "three out of four children are enrolled in both pre- and secondary school." This is not great, but I think the intended meaning is that 3/4 of kids end up enrolling in both preschool and secondary school, before and after their primary school experience. However, I don't think this would be acceptable on the GMAT. I don't even like "pre- and secondary," which is odd and over-casual. Basically, the Economist editors were asleep at the wheel on this one.

As for D, although we're allowed to "change the meaning" if the other versions make no sense, here we're just cutting a key concept out, and what remains makes little sense. "Three out of four students enrolled are in it"? In what? This seems to say that 3/4 of the students who are enrolled in primary school are actually in primary school. Hmm . . .

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