UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)

The Montreal-based UNESCO Institute for Statistics was established in July 1999, in order to reform UNESCO's statistical capacities. Much of its work is carried out in close cooperation with the various sectors and field offices of the Organization.

An example relates to the compilation and refinement of Regional Education Indicators in the Americas. Among the inputs to the IV Summit of the Americas (Mar del Plata, Argentina, November 2005) was a 109-page report entitled Regional Panorama 2005: Progressing Towards the Goals, prepared by the UNESCO Regional Office for Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago, Chile) in collaboration with the UIS. The report draws on data on the state of education in twelve Caribbean-island countries that figure among the 34 active members of the Organization of American States: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago.

Another initiative is that for building capacity for statistics collecting and reporting in the Pacific region. The two-year project – funded by Japanese funds-in-trust – completed its field work phase in February 2006, with findings and recommendations included in a draft report to be released later in 2006 (provisionally entitled 'Statistical capacity building to Pacific region countries in the production and use of statistical information for better management of the education sector'). Under preparation are plans for a possible second-phase project in the Pacific, as well as for a somewhat analogous Statistical Capacity Building project for Caribbean countries. For further information, contact UIS's Doug Drew (d.drew@uis.unesco.org) or Brian Doyle (b.doyle(at)uis.unesco.org).

At the interregional level, a search tool on the EFA has been developed by the UIS and the EFA Global Monitoring Report team. This tool enables searches to be made by table (in the 2006 EFA statistical annex), theme, indicator, country and region, and to export results into an Excel format.