Counting down to 2030: Analyzing the achievements and challenges of the global education goal (SDG 4)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was designed to be universal. It has brought people and planet, as well as poor and rich countries, together for the first time under an integrated framework, through an inclusive and participatory process. The global education goal, SDG4 – to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all – takes an expansive view of education, and is critical to achieve all the Sustainable Development Goals, and transform our relationship with the planet and our collective well-being (UNESCO, 2016).

The mid-point of the 2030 agenda – around 2023 – prompted much critical scholarship on the vision, measurement, progress, challenges and policy implications for SDG 4 (Edwards Jr et al., 2024). The in-depth review by the 2023 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, the monitoring report mandated by the international education community to monitor SDG 4, shows that none of the SDG 4 aspirational targets stands any chance of being reached. The global out of school population of primary and secondary school age was estimated at 250 million in 2022. The number of illiterate adults in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 9 million between 2015 and 2021. The percentage of trained teachers in primary education has remained almost stagnant at 86%. To get back on track for SDG 4, a new child needs to be enrolled in school every 2 seconds until 2030. A global pandemic, the worsening multilateral environment, climate change and ongoing conflicts, are among the many reasons for this situation (UNESCO, 2023).

Since the beginning of global agendas, no agenda has been met in full. In 2015, the Global Monitoring Report presented a sobering assessment of what was achieved between 2000 and 2012 with the Education for All Agenda. The report highlighted the successes in access, improving gender equality, the growing attention to issues of quality education, and the challenges of underfinancing and persistent inequality. There was much unfinished business in the aspiration of ensuring education for all, despite the generally more favorable economic, political and social conditions compared to previous decades (UNESCO, 2015).

Therefore, the ultimate value of any international agenda – whether in education or in other development sectors – perhaps should be assessed in terms of whether there was any acceleration relative to past trends, or whether the policymaking was more purposeful as a result (Author, 2023). Understanding what has happened requires an intentional analysis of the data and indicators, the policy efforts and political commitments by countries to monitor and improve the education situation, and a robust understanding of the enabling environment and conditions.

The session aims to respond to aspects of the following research questions:
•What have been the significant political and technical developments in country ownership of global education monitoring? What are the implications of these political processes for improving government accountability and acceleration of education progress?
•How will the disruptions caused by global crises – such as conflict, climate or financial crises – affect education outcomes, and consequently the achievement of SDG 4 targets and monitoring? How are these disruptions experienced differentially by different socioeconomic groups?
•How did countries incorporate elements of SDG 4 at the national and state level in policy and implementation?
•How can we link national policy efforts to education outcomes?
•How are the enabling conditions – such as financing and teacher quantity and quality – going to impact SDG 4 progress?

The papers on this panel provide insights on these questions, and highlight new directions for analysis that can improve the robustness of policy relevant research and evidence.

Format
The session begins with 3 presentations (13-15 mins each).
1.The first presentation will first summarize the political developments around setting national targets on SDG indicators. Then, it will present the approach to the next three GEM report cycles in the run up to 2030. Based on a review of progress on selected SDG 4 indicators, with particular emphasis on SDG 4 benchmark indicators, the focus will be on describing cases of countries that have improved rapidly over the course of the past 15-20 years. The purpose of these reports will be to assess the reasons and extract potential policy lessons. These lessons should help inform the debate on how to set the education agenda priorities beyond 2030.

2.The second presentation will analyze the experiences and achievements of implementing SDG 4 at the national level, using in-depth case analysis from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand.

3.The third presentation will use MICS data and geocoded climate data to analyze how natural disasters disrupt the learning of children in low- and middle-income countries, and how these effects on foundational learning vary by socioeconomic status. This will represent a first-ever analysis of the distributional effects of impacts of climate and pollution hazards on children’s education.

The two discussants will then reflect on the presentations, and present global insights on analyzing SDG 4 in the future for policy impact from two perspectives (20 mins):

•The first discussant will reflect on how policy data can be used as proxies of country effort in explaining variation in progress towards SDGs. The reflections are based on the WERD database – a repository of roughly 12,000 national education reforms reported to international organizations and experts, covering the period since 1960. The intervention will highlight how the database can shed light on the extent to which education policy has evolved to emphasize access, quality or new content areas, since the database contains rich longitudinal information on trends within countries.
•The second discussant will reflect on the possibilities and challenges of SDG 4 achievement by analyzing the adequacy and distribution of qualified teachers across various levels of education.
The session will conclude with Questions and Answers for the presenters and discussants (25 mins).

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Priyadarshani Joshi, UNESCO

Individual Presentations

• Countdown to 2030: the new GEM Report approach to linking SDG 4 indicators to political and policy commitments - Manos Antoninis, Global Education Monitoring Report, UNESCO

• Making progress on SDG 4: Lessons from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand - Fernando M. Reimers, Harvard University

• Disasters, disruptions, and foundational learning skills for high- and low-SES children in LMICs - Emily Hannum, University of Pennsylvania; JERE RICHARD BEHRMAN, University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Patricia Bromley, Stanford University

• Amita Chudgar, Michigan State University