Our recent blogs have focused on the difficulties of trying to gather robust and internationally-comparable data on education, with policymakers, researchers and citizens struggling to make sense of conflicting numbers from multiple data sources, or trying to find any numbers at all. For non-statisticians, the data picture is blurry, at best.
With the Eurozone in turmoil and sluggish economic growth in the US and elsewhere, investors may well see sub-Saharan Africa – still one of the fastest growing regional economies on earth – as the new frontier. While the region’s economic growth has slowed, falling from 4.5% in 2014 to 3% in 2015, it continues to outpace growth in many of the world’s most advanced economies. However, as the World Bank has noted, the region faces major economic headwinds, from disparities and poverty to falling commodity price
The trade of cultural goods doubled during the period 2004-2013 despite a global recession and a massive shift among consumers of movies and music towards web-based services.
A new report from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), The Globalisation of Cultural Trade: A Shift in Consumption - International flows of cultural goods and services 2004-2013, takes an in-depth look at the export and import of cultural goods and services around the world.
Can the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) really change the world for the better in just 15 years? One thing’s for sure: we’ll never know without good data. SDG 4 – Education 2030 – is so ambitious that we will need more and better data to monitor progress, identify bottlenecks and, above all, sharpen policies and ensure that every dollar invested in education makes a tangible difference in people’s lives.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day. This year’s Day, under the banner of ‘Reading the Past, Writing the Future’, honours five decades of global progress on literacy rates. It also explores innovative ways to expand literacy in the future: a global promise set out in Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education. Target 4.6 aims to ensure that all youth and most adults achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030.
Last week, the Education Commission released a major report, calling for a new compact between developing countries and the international community to transform education performance, innovation, inclusion and finance.
Culture is who we are. Whether we are from Alaska or Johannesburg, from the smallest rural hamlet or one of the world’s megacities, our culture has been the building block of our identity, our sense of belonging and the social and economic cohesion of our communities. It has moulded our attitudes to our families and friends, our jobs, our state of mind and our overall wellbeing.
The gaps in education data have become a recurring theme in this blog. Indeed, most observers would agree that if data on education were a human body, it would be a sick patient at the moment. We see the gaps in the data each day, and the struggles of statisticians as they try valiantly to plug those gaps. And this is the reality: we lack the basic data of sufficient quality to track global – or in many cases, national – progress towards the educational goals.
How much do governments spend on education? Who pays for education and how are the resources spent? These seemingly simple questions are difficult to answer for many countries that lack sustainable systems to collect, disseminate and analyse data on education financing. To gain a complete picture of education spending in a given country, national statisticians must gather data from various sources, often using different data classification systems. In many cases, they are not able to compile data on education spending by households or non-governmental organizations, for example.
Many of us had one we will never forget – a teacher who inspired and encouraged us. We were fortunate. Millions of children today are not so lucky.