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.
When assessing whether children can read, we should remember why reading is so critical, and why we should be concerned when children miss out on this critical skill. Everyone reading this blog had a moment in childhood when meaningless swirls on a page began to make sense. As adults, our ability to read benefits us in a multitude of ways, every single day. There is no doubt that our lives would have been diminished and constrained without it.
Les filles sont toujours plus susceptibles que les garçons de ne jamais mettre un pied dans une classe, malgré les progrès spectaculaires qui ont été accomplis au cours des vingt dernières années.
The fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is not only about quality education – it is about inclusion and equity. These two words define the very substance of the quality education that we want for the world’s children. None of the targets related to SDG 4 can be achieved without them (indeed, target 4.5 is dedicated entirely to equity). So they have to be reflected in the indicators.
What a difference a year makes. Last week in Nairobi, when we woke to find a grey blanket of fog wrapped around our conference centre, it was hard to believe that only a year ago, the founding directors of our citizen-led assessment movement set up the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network. The Network is a south-south partnership whose member countries carry out sample-based, citizen-led assessments to measure the learning levels of all children in their own homes, regardless of their age, gender, or whether they go to school or not.
l’Observatoire international sur l’équité et l’inclusion dans l’éducation
L’équité est au cœur des Objectifs de développement durable (ODD), la Cible 4.5 visant spécifiquement à « éliminer les inégalités entre les sexes dans le domaine de l’éducation et assurer l’égalité d’accès des personnes vulnérables, y compris les personnes handicapées, les autochtones et les enfants en situation vulnérable, à tous les niveaux d’enseignement et de formation professionnelle ».
We have known for years that there are far too many primary-age children out of school: the stagnating numbers have been there for all to see. Far less has been known about the numbers of secondary-age adolescents and youth out of school, and in particular those of upper secondary school age who are – or should be – on the brink of a productive adult life. The numbers are out today, and they are every bit as alarming as we feared they would be.
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