New data on learning are steadily coming on-stream, helping us to gauge the extent to which children and youth, in school and out, are learning acquiring the skills they need to build their lives. This week at the UKFIET (The Education and Development Forum) Conference in London, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) has set out progress on the development of a global approach to measure learning. The UIS presentation showed the challenges and the most feasible solutions to resolve them.

The theme of this year's International Literacy Day on Friday, 8 September, is ‘Literacy in a Digital World’. The Day aims to highlight the kind of literacy skills people need to navigate this world and the literacy policies and programmes that can leverage the opportunities such a world provides.

In 2015, the international community agreed on Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which now forms the universal education agenda to 2030. Many countries still have a far way to go to reach these targets, and to do this, they will need external support to overhaul their education systems. There are two dimensions at stake to achieve SDG 4: identification of policy priorities and the associated data availability and quality to monitor progress.

The push for globally-comparable measures of learning is truly underway, with work well advanced through the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML) to develop common metrics to benchmark student performance in reading and mathematics. The development of common metrics is fundamental to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4): ensure inclusive and quality education for all by 2030.

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics

This blog was also published by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). 

Last month saw a major leap forward on the global reporting of learning outcomes – on which children are learning, which children are not learning, and why.

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Dankert Vedeler, Co-Chair of the SDG Education 2030 Steering Committee

This blog was also published by Norrag.