The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), is looking forward to the arrival of hundreds of education experts, teachers, and policymakers from around the world as they make their way to Ottawa for the UNESCO Week for Peace and Sustainable Development, March 6-10, which will focus specifically on the role of education.
With the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 4, governments have pledged to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030 and to eliminate disparities so that every child and adolescent completes quality education and learning. Can these challenges be met?
As the chart illustrates, the past 15 years saw a steep decline in out-of-school rates at three levels of education, spurred by inclusive policies and legislation. Girls in particular benefited from the global push for universal primary education.
Unfinished business
To mark International Women’s Day 2017 (March 8), the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is launching a new edition of the eAtlas of Gender Inequality in Education to show where girls and women are making progress and where they are being left behind at every level of education. A series of interactive maps and charts bring to life an extraordinary range of data for about 200 countries produced by the UIS, which is the official data source for the global goal on education.
Around the world, national statistical offices (NSOs) and line ministries involved in data collection and production are throwing their energies into efforts to track progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). National statistical systems in developing countries – often under-resourced, under-staffed and under pressure – already achieve miracles with the limited tools at their disposal. Now they are being pushed even harder, with the SDGs calling for more and better data for a wider range of development issues.
The UIS will be showing the way forward on measuring learning and equity in education through a series of presentations and panel discussions at the annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) taking place in Atlanta (USA) from 5-9 March.
This question was the starting point for a gathering of cultural statistics experts, researchers and government organizations as well as participants from the private sector, and is the subject of a new report on the proceedings of the meeting, held in Montreal in May 2016.
Only 4 of the 15 countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have policies in place to support the development of science and technology, potentially a key economic driver in the region. In response, CARICOM established the Science, Technology and Innovation Committee (CSTIC) in 2014 to implement a Plan of Action. Priorities include the development of basic and fundamental infrastructure and building statistical expertise.
New Module to Map Assessments of Children and Youth in School and Out
The UIS has completed the first stage in a major upgrade of its Catalogue of Learning Assessments, which collects a wide range of data and information on learning assessments and serves to document countries’ efforts in monitoring and tracking learning.
To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the UIS is highlighting the persistent gap between men and women in doctoral studies and research.
On 11 February, the world will be celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science. There will be lots of articles and speeches about the famous “leaky pipeline”, a metaphor used to describe the constant flow of women leaving the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) throughout their studies and careers.