Save the Date (and the Data!): Stay Tuned for the SDG 4 Data Digest 2018

If you want to view the most complete data landscape on learning outcomes, the SDG 4 Data Digest 2018 is your go-to source. With launch events planned next week at the Global Education Meeting in Brussels (3-5 December 2018) and at the Global Partnership for Education Board Meeting in Dublin (6-7 December 2018), the Digest will report on the quest for data to track lifelong learning. Continue reading

Convening for Consensus on SDG 4 Data

The Technical Cooperation Group on SDG 4 meets this week in Mexico City to come to agreement on the most practical approaches to measure education progress

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)

As any statistician will tell you, gathering data is only half the battle. If data are to make a difference, they have to have power. For that, they need to be backed by political will, with a firm commitment that they will be used to drive change.

Similarly at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), gathering data is only part of our mandate. We work hard to develop the indicators, standards and methodological tools needed to monitor progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education. But we work just as hard to convene and build consensus in order to strengthen that all-important political buy-in among countries and partners.

Gathering in Mexico City to create consensus

That’s the overall objective of this week’s meeting of the Technical Cooperation Group on the Indicators for SDG 4–Education 2030 (TCG) in Mexico City, co-hosted by the UIS and the Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (INEE). National representatives and global experts will come together from 15 to 16 November to agree on the most practical approaches to measure progress towards SDG 4. Continue reading

We Are Ready to Start Monitoring Early-grade Learning

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
This blog was also published by the Global Education Monitoring Report

Young learners have moved up the data agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 4! The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and its partners have been pushing to upgrade SDG 4 Indicator 4.1.1a on measuring learning outcomes in Grades 2 and 3, and earlier this week we heard that our efforts have been successful. Continue reading

In Search of Common Ground for Learning Indicators – From Local to Global

By Baela Raza Jamil, Chief Executive Officer of Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Lead of ASER Pakistan and Commissioner on the Education Commission 

For 10 consecutive days in October, I travelled across Hamburg, Karachi, Islamabad, Muzzafarabad (AJK), Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalpur, Multan, Muzzaffargarh and Lahore. The purposes of my travel included chasing a consensus for globally-agreed learning indicators, initiating the 2018 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) assessments and overseeing accelerated learning gains for out-of-school adolescent girls. Mindboggling as the 10-day footprint may be, the common thread was the importance of measuring and improving learning and that improvements are verified through agreed definitions. Continue reading