Everything is in Place to Track Global Progress on Education: Except the Data

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Dankert Vedeler, Co-Chair of the SDG Education 2030 Steering Committee

This blog was also published by Norrag.

The global goal for progress on education (SDG 4) has been set: an inclusive and equitable education for every child by 2030. The individual targets that must be achieved if we are to reach the goal are in place, from learning outcomes to teacher training. And experts and organizations working on education data have developed the detailed indicators that will signal whether or not the world is on track to achieve the global goal by the deadline. Continue reading

World Poverty Could Be More than Halved if All Adults Finish Secondary School

By Aaron Benavot, Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report, and Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics

In a few weeks, the UN High-Level Political Forum will gather to discuss poverty eradication as a cornerstone of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Agenda. Debates over how to tackle entrenched poverty often centre on different political ideologies. For some, the answer may be the pursuit of free-market economic growth, in the hope that some of the wealth generated will ‘trickle down’. For others, the answer may be social and economic interventions aimed at levelling the playing field, where everyone has something, even if that something is – at best – meagre. Continue reading

The Pressure is On! Powering Ahead with the Technical Cooperation Group for SDG 4 – Education 2030 Indicators

By Silvia Montoya and Jordan Naidoo, Co-Chairs of the TCG

This blog was originally published by Norrag.

The pressure is on! This is the conclusion of the recent meeting of the Technical Cooperation Group (TCG) on SDG 4 – Education 2030 Indicators. While discussions covered a range of issues, the question on everyone’s mind was how we will measure learning globally given the tremendous gaps in data, methodology and capacity-building. For example, only 32% of the developing countries receiving support from the Global Partnership for Education take part in learning assessments and their results cannot be compared globally.  Continue reading

A Roadmap with Workable Tools to Measure Learning Achievements Worldwide

By David Coleman, Senior Education Advisor, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (and Chair of the GAML Strategic Planning Committee), and Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)

This blog was originally published by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)

Report from the third meeting of the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (11-12 May)

The world community is that much closer to having answers to one of the most fundamental questions in education: who is – and who is not – meeting agreed educational standards?  The answer to this question will allow involved actors to more accurately respond and take action: how do we prioritize energy and resources to achieve learning for all? Continue reading

The World’s Families: Hidden Funders of Education

By Friedrich Huebler and Elise Legault, Programme Specialists at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics

This blog was also published by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

We know too little about education finance: where the money for education comes from, where it goes, and whether it is spent effectively. Drawing on today’s major release of new data, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) shows that even the most robust government data on education spending misses out a crucial part of the financing equation: the money spent by households on the education of their children. Continue reading