The UIS is the custodian agency for Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education and is in charge of collecting and disseminating data for the indicators used to monitor progress toward the targets under SDG 4. Collecting education data that is of high quality and comparable across countries is important to fulfill the objectives of SDG 4. It is also crucial to ensure that all children and young people are represented in the data.

Starting this week, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) will be hosting a series of webinars, working with Member States in the important process of collecting data to inform Sustainable Development Goal 4 for education (SDG 4). According to the SDG 4 - Education 2030 Framework for Action the UIS is the official source of cross-nationally comparable data on education, and the Survey of Formal Education is a key part of fulfilling this mandate.  

The bi-annual Survey on Literacy and Educational Attainment launches on November 27. The data collected will complement the information from the UIS Survey of Formal Education. The questionnaires for the 2021 literacy and attainment survey are posted on the UIS website, http://uis.unesco.org/uis-questionnaires and are available to download in English, French and Spanish.

Results released for the 2nd iteration of the UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank survey to monitor national education responses to COVID-19 school closures.

As part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank jointly launched the Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures to enable policy makers to assess the global impact of the pandemic.

The UIS is launching its annual 2021 Survey of Formal Education for the reference year ending in 2020 to ensure the timely collection of data for SDG 4. The questionnaires and related materials are available on the UIS website at: http://uis.unesco.org/uis-questionnaires.

As the custodian agency for SDG 4 data, the UIS collects education data and develops indictors to enable Member States to meet national commitments to the Agenda 2030 Framework.

With COVID-19 school closures, teachers are faced with a myriad of challenges – the transition to remote teaching and the safe return to school to name a few. For World Teacher’s Day, the UIS, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 and the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) teams have jointly released this factsheet to highlight the training gaps and needs of teachers in times of crisis:

The need to collect essential data

To help countries cope with COVID-19 school closure learning losses and regain ground in their education targets, the UIS has mindfully revised the core indicators themselves. In an effort to mitigate learning losses, the grouping and development of the UIS SDG Core Indicators now more closely reflect the layers and priorities that inform the SDG 4 Indicators as endorsed by Member States – i.e. global, thematic, regional and national (in descending order):

As part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank jointly launched the Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. The survey sought to collect information from Member States on the country-wide scope of national education responses to the mass school closures from pre-primary to upper secondary levels. Responses to the survey will help better guide local/national policy responses to mitigate the impact of school closures and help prepare for the reopening of schools.