Coordinating and monitoring SDG4–Education 2030 Agenda

Education being central to the realization of the ‘Leaving no one behind’ agenda, all Member States and international education community unanimously committed in 2015 to achieving the SDG4 Goal, ‘Ensure equitable and inclusive quality education for all and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’ UNESCO, as part of its leadership role on SDG4, aims at facilitating information and prompting needed discussions to unpack the SDG 4 agenda, in order to identify ways and approaches to tackle with the present day challenges in education.

To support country-led actions and the roadmaps emerging from the Arab Meetings on Education (ARMED) in a coordinated manner and promote regional cooperation and collaboration, the Arab Regional Support Group for Education 2030 was constituted in July 2016 and has since supported a number of regional, sub-regional and national initiatives to address regional issues of common concern and provide coordinated, coherent support at all levels. The SDG4 support group has been utilized to garner support and ownership on various processes such as the abovementioned ARMED-IV meeting as well as the benchmarking process.

The development of the Regional Synthesis Report on SDG4 progress in the Arab States brought together findings from 16 voluntary national reports and the valuable inputs from the regional education institutes. This report presents a brief story of regional progress of SDG4 as part of the effort by the UNESCO Beirut office to document the progress made by countries in the Arab region, building on the country exercises undertaken in 2019, and taking into consideration the global devastation to the education sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The national teams worked on drafting national reports on progress achieved in SDG4 indicators, indicating partnerships and success stories with the support of regional Institutes/Organizations.