The invisible classroom: Why data is key to solving the learning crisis

In February 2024, UNESCO organized its first-ever global Conference on Education Data and Statistics at Paris Headquarters. Speaking at the gathering, Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, underlined the urgent need to find new sources for data collection and innovative methods to fill gaps. She highlighted three key points. 

Data and statistics are increasingly recognized as fundamental to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Data provide a clear picture and inform our action plan to achieve all SDG targets. This includes achieving SDG 4, which aims for inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. 

Today, there are more and better data on is questions like whether children are in or out of school, how many teachers are needed, if schools have internet connectivity, and the education financing gap. These data guide policy decisions, global discourse, and donors’ priorities. 

Data also play a vital role in enhancing educational outcomes by supporting planning, monitoring progress and evaluating policies. 

In the follow-up to the Transforming Education Summit, there is a need to identify where transformation is happening, how and with which outcomes. For example, the new benchmark indicators on greening education, school connectivity, and youth participation are important developments in the follow-up to the Summit.

Education does not happen in a vacuum

Learning happens in communities and is affected by a wide range of factors, which is why we need an intersectional and an intersectoral approach. Data on the links between education, health and nutrition illustrate this point. School meals have been found to increase enrollment rates by 9%, leading to investments in school feeding programmes and improved outcomes for students. 

The impacts of the COVID-19 school closures on the learning losses as well as the mental health of learners, is another example, driving the advocacy efforts of UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition during the pandemic. In gathering data, we need to consider a lifelong learning perspective across all education levels - from early childhood education and care, to pre-primary, secondary, and in a diversity of learning environments including workplaces, communities and online. 

The last few years have seen notable progress thanks to the global community of education statisticians, with the support of the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, our official source of education data. Unfortunately, despite this progress, we still face significant data gaps. A global invisible classroom of over half a billion children have been left out of learning assessments. Even where data do exist, they are often outdated, fragmented and incomplete. Much work remains to be done to fill these gaps. This global conference marks an important step in this process to improve education data and statistics for better policy. 

There is a pressing need to strengthen the nexus between data and policy by creating a “culture of data”. How do we create a culture of data? We first need to ensure that data is accessible to policy-makers. Leaders in the education field need what can be described as a “missing dashboard” – one that holds basic, cross-cutting, and intersectoral education data that can be used for evidence-based decision-making.

UNESCO is investing in just these kinds of tools: The SDG 4 Dashboards and the Dashboard of Country Commitments and Actions to Transform Education. At the Conference, UNESCO launched the SDG 4 Scorecard, a tool developed by UIS and the Global Education Monitoring Report to track and report progress towards SDG 4. 

A ‘culture of data’ is also marked by principles of transparency, collaboration, participation, and openness. At the international level, this requires a global community of practice that defines and agrees on concepts, definitions, standards and methodologies.

The education data agenda is a global agenda for the common good, and we need all countries to contribute. As in all fields, transforming data into policy action requires capacity, political will and investment.

We know that countries are the ones best placed to monitor the quality of their education systems, and this is why UNESCO invests in capacity building. Investing in data collection also pays important dividends. The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data estimates an average return of US $32 for every US $1 invested in strengthening data systems in low- and middle-income countries.

It is time to modernize our methods with new technologies. We need to go beyond traditional surveys and make use of new types and sources of data, leveraging artificial intelligence and data analytics. New technologies like AI are revolutionizing the way we access, analyze and share data, with important implications for the future of knowledge, education and learning. 

We have seen interesting examples emerge from education systems and institutions around the world applying technology in support of personalized learning, assessments, and admissions, or even in identifying the safest route to build a school, as Indonesia did with geospatial data. 

UNESCO is also exploring how to harness the potential of technology for data analysis. It is developing a new pilot large language model linked to the UIS SDG 4 database with an interactive chatbot to extract data analysis, charts, figures, and respond to the needs of users and decision-makers. This databot, developed by UIS, will be the world’s first bot built with education monitoring data. 

But, as with anything new, we must also express caution – and keep in mind the costs—technical, ethical and environmental. The same AI-powered technologies that can be leveraged for learning also pose concerns for privacy and security.

This drives UNESCO’s work to steer technology in education on our terms, which is about actions for inclusion, equity, quality and accessibility.

• Global Conference on Education Data and Statistics
• SDG 4 Scorecard
• Press release: Over half a billion children’s learning levels still unknown