With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UIS has been clearly recognised as the “the official source of cross-nationally comparable data on education”, as confirmed in the Education 2030 Framework for Action.
What does it takes to get education data right?
The UIS is the leader in developing education indicators and monitoring tools, particularly in areas that are hard to measure, including equity, finance and learning -- new priorities under the Education 2030 agenda.
Of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14. According to UIS data, almost 60% of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school.
Without urgent action, the situation will likely get worse as the region faces a rising demand for education due to a still-growing school-age population.
The quality of education ultimately depends on teachers. This is why Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) specifically calls on countries and donors to significantly increase their recruitment and training. To monitor progress and better target policies, the UIS produces a range of indicators about teachers given their essential role in providing quality education to all.
About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.
Despite the steady rise in literacy rates over the past 50 years, there are still 754 million illiterate adults around the world, most of whom are women. These numbers produced by the UIS are a stark reminder of the work ahead to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially Target 4.6 to ensure that all youth and most adults achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030.
The demand for higher education continues to grow as universities compete globally to attract students. But are students opting for private or public institutions? To what extent do they pursue their education abroad? Are women moving into fields traditionally dominated by men, such as science and computing? These are just some of the questions faced by policymakers looking to expand and diversify their national tertiary education systems.
The success or failure of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will depend, very largely, on sound statistics. It is obvious that we’ll need quality data to track progress towards the goals from their launch in 2015 to their 2030 deadline. But we’ll also need it throughout the journey to tell us whether we’re going the right way or need to change direction. We’ll need comparable data to show policymakers what is working (and what is not), to keep them motivated and, whenever necessary, to hold them to account.
We have just launched the ‘go to’ initiative on the monitoring of learning worldwide: The Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML). What and how children, youth and adults learn is at the top of the global education agenda, with Sustainable Development Goal 4 demanding inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of lifelong learning for all by 2030.
Here’s the good news: in the past 15 years, more children than ever have enrolled in primary school, thanks to a massive global effort to get them into the classroom. And here’s the bad news: despite the millions of extra children pouring into the world’s schools, many children still miss out.