With Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4), the international community has pledged to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities learning opportunities for all.”
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics, as the official source of cross-nationally comparable data on education, hosts a database for SDG 4 indicators on learning outcomes.
Learning Outcomes: Data production, a concept note with information on the production of data.
Data Resources
- Benchmark Indicators
- Download SDG 4 data in the following formats:
Data on Indicator 4.1.1
Proportion of children and young people (a) in Grade 2 or 3; (b) at the end of primary education; and (c) at the end of lower secondary education achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex
The UIS Learning Outcomes Database contains data on Indicator 4.1.1. The data are collected from six cross-national and regional assessments.
The international assessments covered in the database include the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). The regional assessments include data from the Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE), the Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Educatifsde la CONFEMEN (PASEC), and the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ).
The data are disaggregated by sex, school location, student language, socioeconomic status and immigration status, and the database includes parity indices for these disaggregations.
The database provides two types of data: anchored and unanchored. The anchored data are based on a methodology of anchoring student achievement tests, which makes use of the fact that some countries participated in different assessments simultaneously; hence, the assessments can be linked by the results of those countries. This allows for comparability in tracking Indicator 4.1.1.
While the anchored database provides both basic and minimum proficiency levels, the unanchored database provides minimum proficiency levels only. They are reported according to each assessment’s definition. Therefore, the anchored and unanchored data are not comparable.
| Unanchored database | Anchored database | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 2/3 | End of Primary | End of lower secondary | Grad 2/3 | End of Primary | End of lower secondary | |
| Number of countries | 93 | 49 | 98 | 71 | 49 | 98 |
| Number of regions | 7 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 2 | 8 |
| Years | 1995-2016 | 1995-2014 | 1995-2016 | 1995-2016 | 1995-2013 | 1995-2016 |
| Assessments | LLECE, PASEC, PIRLS, TIMSS | LLECE, PASEC, SACMEQ | PISA, TIMSS | PIRLS, TIMSS | LLECE, PASEC, SACMEQ | PISA, TIMSS |
- The UIS collects data on Indicator 4.1.1 from national learning assessments.
- The UIS collects data on Indicator 4.1.1 from citizen-led assessments.
- Data on Indicator 4.1.1 can be found in the UIS database.
- UIS Learning Outcomes Anchored Database: encompasses internationally comparable data on indicator 4.1.1. (see related paper on The Anchoring Method for Indicator 4.1.1 Reporting).