About Us

Established in 2016, the Technical Cooperation Group on the Indicators for SDG 4 - Education 2030 (TCG) provides a platform to discuss and develop the indicators used to monitor the Education 2030 Agenda in an open, inclusive and transparent manner.

The TCG is composed of a maximum of 35 regionally representative members of Member States, multilateral agencies and civil society groups, in addition to the Co-Chair of the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) hosts the TCG Secretariat and is co-chaired by Silvia Montoya, Director of UIS, and Manos Antoninis, Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR). There is a rotation of the TCG members every two years and members are elected based on UNESCO’s official electoral regional groupings.

The TCG works in tandem with the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML) to make recommendations on indicator development, and to use the different data sources through cooperation across partnerships. The GAML has established six task forces, organized by target (4.1, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6 and 4.7) and another task force on assessment implementation and capacity development. Members of the TCG Working Groups and GAML Task Forces work collectively via emails, conference calls and meet regularly.

The key objectives of the TCG include the following:

  1. Establish common standards and methodologies.
  2. Establish common data standards and methodologies of universal validity that maximize the use of different sources of information for the global and thematic indicator framework of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) and the Education 2030 Agenda. More concretely to:
    1. recommend and decide on priorities on improvements in efficiency and alignment of education data collection systems;
    2. propose, develop and endorse methodological norms and standards for specific indicators;
    3. propose, develop and endorse tools and guidelines for specific indicators;
    4. identify needs and propose ways to build capacity for countries to utilise these tools and guidelines;
    5. coordinate global efforts to improve data availability and quality based on norms, standards and procedures; and
    6. collaborate with agencies and countries in the implementation of the working groups strands by sharing the chairing of the working groups with the support from the UIS as Secretariat.
    7. Define and approve methods pertaining to other pressing policy and management challenges identified by Member States and which are not included in the SDG global and thematic framework but for which globally comparable data and a global data collection might be justifiable for setting priorities for development and reporting. These data may also be cross cutting and relevant to more than one SDG (such as data for displaced populations).
  3. Work with the UIS Secretariat to assure the quality and timeliness of the data produced, ensuring the compliance in the implementation of the decisions taken by the TCG.
  4. Support the work of the IAEG-SDGs, relevant regional bodies and countries related to the implementation of the global and thematic monitoring framework and coordinate the harmonization of regional monitoring frameworks, assuring the coherence of these processes.
  5. Operate as the Member States advisory group to the Global Coalition for Education Data.
  6. Inform the SDG 4 - Education 2030 Steering Committee on the implementation of the thematic indicator framework.