In September 2022, world leaders and education stakeholders gathered for the Transforming Education Summit (TES) to mobilize solutions to tackle the global learning crisis. Global and national commitments were made to take urgent action to transform education systems, including prioritizing foundational learning.

The Transforming Education Summit was a key milestone for education around the world – but its impact will be determined by the concrete actions we take to follow through on our commitments to transform education. Now, more than a year after this critical moment, what progress has been made? Here are three key findings based on UNICEF’s June–July 2023 pulse survey with 94 low- and middle-income countries.

1. Many governments are taking concrete action on TES commitment areas, with varying degrees of progress.

Over 3 in 4 countries reported concrete government action on digital learning and access to inclusive, quality and safe learning opportunities. Many governments are also taking steps to advance education for children in humanitarian settings as well as foundational learning. To further monitor countries’ progress on foundational learning, UNICEF and the Hempel Foundation launched the Foundational Learning Action Tracker in 2023. It found that countries are still initiating progress on foundational learning: fewer than half of countries have a specific focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in their national curriculum, and only five per cent of countries are assessing socioemotional skills at scale. 

2. Many of the countries where urgent action is needed most have reported taking concrete steps to meet their TES commitments.

For example, we find that among countries where more than half of children are in learning poverty – unable to read and understand a simple text at age 10 – about 3 in 4 countries reported concrete government action on foundational learning. In countries where over 10 per cent of primary school-aged children are out of school, about 4 in 5 countries are taking concrete government steps to advance access to inclusive, safe and quality learning opportunities.

3. Concrete actions are needed for greening education and education financing, especially among countries most affected by these challenges. 

Greening education and education financing are the areas in which the fewest number of countries reported taking government action on TES commitments. Moreover, for countries where these issues are particularly relevant, not enough concrete action is being taken to address them. Among countries with high or extremely high risk of children’s exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, only a third reported concrete government action to advance greening education. Among countries failing to meet the benchmark of allocating at least 15 per cent of total government expenditure to education, just under half of countries reported government action on education financing. 

These initial findings underscore how we cannot lose the momentum of the Transforming Education Summit. We need to keep education a national, regional and global priority.  

Looking ahead, the African Union (AU) has adopted education as the AU theme for the year 2024. In a region with very high learning poverty rates, it is promising that most African countries in our survey reported taking concrete steps to advance TES commitments, including foundational learning. However, some issues stand out as needing intensified efforts: fewer than 2 in 5 African countries reported that the government is taking concrete action on greening education, despite the high risk of children’s exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change in many African countries. 

The Transforming Education Summit was an important step forward, but a true transformation of education will depend on how we turn our commitments into real action for learners, particularly the most marginalized.  

Collectively, we need to ensure accountability to monitor progress and catalyze follow-up actions at national, regional and global levels. Only by doing so can we meet the goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all children – no matter who they are or where they live.

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The zero draft of the political declaration of the High Level Political Forum (HLPF), taking place this year under the auspices of the General Assembly, has been released ahead of a consultation among UN Member States in New York today. But it does not once mention education.

The draft mentions empowering girls; supporting the most vulnerable people; and reaching those furthest behind first, ‘freeing humanity from the tyranny of poverty’, committing to inclusive economic growth and helping children and youth reach their full human potential. But it fails to mention the role that education can play in driving this progress and making change possible. Why?

To give some background, the HLPF is the apex institution to follow up and review on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It meets every July under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council and assesses groups of 5-6 Sustainable Development Goals, their progress or challenges. This year’s Forum will take place in July 9-18 in New York on the theme of “Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality”. This year, six goals are in the spotlight, among them SDG 4, the global goal on education, featuring on the list for the very first time.

Scrolling through the document, keywords representing the other five goals under review in this year’s HLPF feature fairly frequently: economic growth (5 times), inequalities (2), climate and environment (6), sustainable development (24), inclusiveness (3), peace (2) and partnerships (5).

Yet education did not make it into print. Other words associated with the goal also get no coverage, such as skills. Learning is mentioned, but only in terms of the ‘peer learning’ that can happen at the Forum based on the Voluntary National Reviews contributed by about 50 of the countries participating.

This is mysterious given the emphasis put on SDG 4 from the UN Secretary-General himself just this year. A teacher before he served at the United Nations, he said:

“Education is at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals.

We need education to reduce inequalities and improve health.

We need education to achieve gender equality and eliminate child marriage.

We need education to protect our planet’s resources.

And we need education to fight hate speech, xenophobia and intolerance, and to nurture global citizenship.”

The Under-Secretary General of ECOSOC, under whose auspices the Forum takes place also said in March: ”Success in delivering on SDG 4 would contribute considerably toward achieving other goals – reducing inequalities, building knowledge to increase ambition of climate action, and empowering people toward the jobs of the future.”

The declaration from the Youth Forum this April that also was supposed to feed into this statement also “strongly prioritized access to education” stating “Inclusive and quality education is a driver of sustainable development, including climate change adaptation and building peaceful resilient societies.”

Mentions of education made at regional fora, supposedly to feed into this statement, were also ignored. The declaration from the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, for instance, includes the importance of “strengthening of intergenerational knowledge transfer from older persons, and technical and vocational education and training” to achieve SDG 8 on promoting decent work and inclusive economic growth for instance. It references the need to enhance access to education for all to reach SDG 10 on reducing inequalities.

Could it be an omission? Did the authors of the draft forget? Even if they did, is this acceptable? Why is education being forgotten at the highest political levels? How can it be that the importance of equipping all children, youth and adults with the relevant knowledge and skills to shape more resilient, inclusive and sustainable societies is not being acknowledged? It seems that, despite our efforts, education is not receiving the attention it deserves.

The good news is that there is still time to rectify this mistake, this being but a zero draft, and consultations on the draft starting this week, with another round on June 7. The SDG – Education 2030 Steering Committee, convened by UNESCO, are working to influence the next draft being edited, urging Member States to reach out to their capitals and representatives in New York to alert them to the situation. They argue that omitting education from such a declaration will undermine all prospects of progress across the 2030 Agenda, and carry heavy consequences for political and financial attention to education in the future.

They are calling for specific changes to wording, including adding the importance of ensuring ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’ in §6 for ‘ending poverty everywhere’, and increasing educational opportunities in §15. They also want a strong reference to the “fundamental role of education as a catalytic force across the Sustainable Development Goals” in §23.

One could choose to ignore a political statement since many declarations of this kind often end up not holding as much value as we think they do.

But this one is special – and highly symbolic. We have to mobilise our efforts to support the rightful inclusion of education in the text and lobby for governments to give it the recognition it deserves.

And let us continue our efforts to monitor and implement effective progress on education at the country level where real change has to happen fast.

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“I see that there is a problem that signals a governance issue, a breakdown in supervision and oversight by the Minister and I have to intervene” said the Prime Minister before the House of Representatives, as the news broke.

The case unfolded with the questioning in an audit of the Ministry of Education conducted by the Auditor General’s Department (AGD). The audit is focused on “whether the selected public entities procurement and contracts management activities were conducted to attain value for money (which encompasses the achievement of economy, efficiency and effectiveness)”.

Source: AGD website

In the 2017/8 GEM Report we showed the importance of horizontal accountability mechanisms, such as audits, for exposing corruption, or mis-management within governments. They can also go beyond assessing compliance to audit performance, examining whether service provision is efficient and effective, whether policies and spending align with wider government and sector objectives, and whether organizational decision-making is sound. Poland’s Supreme Audit Office has carried out audits on issues ranging from the use of public funds for education institutions and research to the education of Polish citizens living abroad. The Swedish National Audit Office’s audit of the role of tertiary education institutions in providing lifelong learning opportunities led to a recommendation to the government to review incentive structures for such institutions.

Performance audits are increasingly common even in middle income countries. The Royal Audit Authority of Bhutan identified deficiencies in the school feeding programme and recommended setting standard dietary requirements, adapting menus accordingly and establishing a quality control system with an independent assessor.

Unfortunately, often the oversight function of audit mechanisms is not effective, which has partly to do with capacity. In Bangladesh, there was an average delay of 5 years before government agencies responded to audit observations on primary education and 10 years on secondary, for instance. In Sri Lanka, the Committee on Public Accounts demands follow-up on objections raised by the auditor general. For example, action against the director of an education department has been recommended, yet there has been no follow-up

Outside of public accounts committees, permanent committees on education in the legislatures can help hold governments to account, even though in practice their roles vary between countries. Analysis in the 2017/8 GEM Report of New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the United States and Zambia showed that committees usually carried out ex post reviews and provided oversight on legislation and executive actions, e.g. scrutinizing government actions, reviewing existing laws and recommending changes.

In short, while the facts are still unfolding, the case in the news in Jamaica at present shows how important it is for countries to invest in strong institutions to detect and deter corruption in education. The risk of corruption in all sectors and all levels require accountability mechanisms to be taken seriously. Our 2017/8 GEM Report is a good place to find out more about them.

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The GEM 2017/8 Report, which focused on accountability in education, paid special attention to the role of the media. Every country has assorted formal institutional checks and balances to ensure governments exercise their authority in a way compatible with their commitments, ranging from auditors to parliamentarians. But within a broader political process, informal efforts also serve to hold governments accountable for their commitments, policies and results.

The media can be a key partner in holding governments to account

It is here that the role of the media is critical. The efforts of reporters involve the free flow of information to ensure transparency. People need the media to form and express informed views.

The media have huge potential to raise the visibility of education issues, putting pressure on education actors to meet their responsibilities and pursue policy change. By exposing evidence and directing focus, they can set the agenda for the public and policy-makers.

Media publications offer ways to familiarize the public with education research otherwise accessible only to specialists, and to express dissenting views on established policy decisions. Examples include The New York Times questioning the effectiveness of performance-based pay and The Guardian examining the design of criteria used to assess the effectiveness of tertiary education.

The media have played a role in investigating wrongdoing and reporting potential cases of corruption. For example, in Brazil journalists have covered abuses to the national basic education equalization fund. In Nigeria, newspapers have publicized allegations of ghost teachers or teachers collecting more than their official salary. In India, news networks have carried out investigative work to expose fraud and unprofessional practice in medical training institutions.

In Switzerland, the national public broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen questioned the independence of 12 leading universities because of their sponsorship deals, especially within the pharmaceutical industry, and the potential conflicts of interest. It exposed the differences in transparency standards among universities and revealed that one pharmaceutical company reserved the right to alter research results. The findings sparked a national debate on making these contractual arrangements publicly available.

Increasing the flow of information through the media about funding allocation can help empower the public and increase pressure on education officials to act responsibly. In the late 1990s, Uganda’s government initiated a newspaper campaign to publish information on the amount and timing of capitation grant disbursements by the central government to school districts. A decrease in distance of 2.2 km to a newspaper outlet increased the share of funding that reached a school by nearly 10 percentage points.

In Madagascar, the grant received by 20% of schools in 2002/3 did not correspond with the declared amount sent by the district. Anecdotal evidence suggested the funds were diverted to non-education purposes or used privately by local officials. Campaigns via newspapers, radio and television led to the decreased probability of such local exposure, although the impact depended on local literacy rates. Where illiteracy was widespread, the impact of newspapers and poster campaigns was limited, while radio and television were more efficient.

In Mexico, the 2013 National Census of Schools, Teachers and Students of Basic and Special Education revealed some 39,000 teachers nobody had seen or known at their purported workplaces. The results were reported in major national and international media outlets, including El Universal, Milenio and The Wall Street Journal. The Secretariat of Public Education revised its administrative records to update personnel statistics and investigated those who were being paid but not working.

In the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, an analysis of tertiary education news in 1998–2007 showed the media regularly reported on corruption, including bribes, cheating and plagiarism, but was mostly silent on ethical issues, such as sexual and other misconduct and abuse of public property. There was a stronger emphasis on fraud, plagiarism and cheating in UK and US media, while Russian media focused on bribery in admissions and degree completion.

The media need to be up to the task

In times of rapid change in education, exposing problems and publicizing information are important media functions to ensure government accountability in education. Yet to achieve these and reflect diverse social views, the media need to be independent, competent, reflective, democratic and accountable – qualities often lacking, resulting in public distrust. A survey in 36 countries showed that less than half of respondents (43%) trusted the media and almost one-third (29%) avoided the news. While expansion of the internet and social media may have exacerbated the problem, the underlying drivers of mistrust in many countries have much to do with a politically polarized media landscape. Concentrated ownership, but also restrictions on press freedom, lead to perceptions of media bias.

In many countries, the quality of reporting may be poor. In addition to reflecting inherent bias, the media determine what qualifies as newsworthy. The skills of those researching, analysing, organizing and writing or broadcasting news play an important role in reporting quality. For example, the wide coverage of national and international learning assessments tends to be simplistic, emphasizing league tables and rankings instead of providing more nuanced analysis of causes, caveats and policy implications for which governments can be reasonably held to account.

3 May aims to remind governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom but is also, in turn, a day of reflection among media professionals about press freedom and the issues of ethical standards. It is also a day of support for media organisations and the role they play in all spheres of life, including education.

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The Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) embraces the 2018 theme Accountability for SDG4 and the slogan “Keep your promises for education!”. We call on governments to demonstrate political will by producing national education monitoring reports annually as an accountability tool for their citizens. The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE) has embarked on a series of mobilization and advocacy actions in the region.

CLADE: Mobilised for GAWE 2018

CLADE intends to support and encourage public debates on the setbacks and advances in the fulfilment of the right to education in each country, involving the media, education communities and other social sectors. Activities, messages and key demands of GAWE 2018 will be disseminated through the regional blog www.same2018.org and social media channels. CLADE urges its national member forums to demand from the national authorities the organization of public debates on the implementation of the human right to education and the development of regular official monitoring reports, which would also report on the compliance with this right, with an active and significant participation of civil society.

GAWE 2018 will serve as a step in the preparation for the next High Level Political Forum (HLPF), which will take place in July 2018 in New York, where the following countries will present their national voluntary reports: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay.

CLADE will also be producing a state of the region report on the compliance with the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG 4) for Latin America and the Caribbean. This report will be presented at the Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education in Sucre, Bolivia, in July 2018.

The organisation will aim to popularise the #MakeitPublic campaign by continuously monitoring the fulfilment of commitments made in national education plans and towards SDG 4 in the region, with emphasis on the commitments on inclusive education and education financing: the States of the region signed the obligation to invest at least 4-6% of GDP and 15-20% of their total public budget in education. These monitoring fronts are driven, respectively, through the Regional Observatory of Inclusive Education (OREI), and the Monitoring System for the Financing of the Human Right to Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

GAWE in the Dominican Republic: For the fulfilment of educational goals, transparency and accountability of the state to the citizens

At the same time and in the context of the GAWE celebrations in the Dominican Republic, the Socio-educational Forum (Foro Socio Educativo – FSE), member of CLADE and GCE in this country, has planned several activities focusing on SDG4 and the mobilisation of civil society around the #MakeitPublic campaign, calling government to continue producing the national education monitoring reports annually and improve its qualiy.

They range from the distribution of stickers, posters, guides for educational centers and brochures at the pavilion of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD) during the National Fair of the Book; to organising interviews with officials of MINERD, decentralized institutes and other organizations on the implementation of SDG 4 in the Dominican Republic; to the meeting of a panel with experts on the theme “Four years of the signing of the National Pact for Educational Reform. Have we made progress in the implementation?”, with a view to evaluating the progress, limitations and challenges on the implementation of these commitments and the coordination of the linked social actors.

A new bulletin of the Observatory of the Budget in Education (an initiative promoted by the FSE) will be also released. With the title “The gender focus in education in the Dominican Republic, legal framework and reality in schools. The budget execution of the MINERD of 2017”, the document will be presented to education officials and members of the education community of the Municipality of Tamayo, Bahoruco, on May 3, 2018.

Beyond the GAWE, the FSE has been acting permanently in monitoring the results of different education policies and programs in the country, as well as in monitoring the quality of national educational spending. These actions are driven in line with the National Development Strategy 2030 and the Goals of the Education Agenda 2030.

Thus, the Dominican Republic joins the celebration of the GAWE 2018 under the national slogan “2030 Educational Goals: Transparency and Accountability to Citizenship. Keep your Promises!”.

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This blog is written by Dr Remy C Nnadozie, Director: Institutional Planning, Rhodes University, and the author of a case study on accountability and education in South Africa commissioned for the 2017/8 GEM Report. The blog is part of a series showing that accountability in education is shaped by a country’s history and political, social, and cultural context.

Background: South Africa’s education system

South Africa is a constitutional democracy with a three-tier system of government and an independent judiciary. The national, provincial and local levels of government all have legislative and executive authority in their own spheres. As part of the apartheid policy (1948-1991), the Bantu Education Act of 1953 enforced racial segregation of education systems, including resources and curricula. Schools in the Black African communities were severely under-resourced and the consequences of this Act are still observable today.

The Department of Basic Education has the responsibility of managing and the content, values, techniques and curriculum for all schools in South Africa up to Grade 12, including adult literacy programmes. Particular importance is placed on the results of the MATRIC examinations.

One of the most transformative and liberal constitutions in modern history

The South African Constitution was adopted in 1996 following the installation of democratically elected government structures in 1994. Chapter 2 of the Constitution enforces the right to education, which has been implemented with some notable court judgements. The case of the Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability versus Government of the Republic of South Africa is an example in which a court of law – the Western Cape high court – ruled that the State has a duty to provide equally for the education of all children, including those with various forms of disabilities.

Despite the declared intentions of the government, parts of the South African education system still face challenges. For example, many schools in South Africa do not have the required resources for effective teaching and learning. In terms of infrastructure and staffing, the majority of schools in the townships and rural areas are still regarded as under resourced. Accountability, from both the government and the community level can help address some of the shortcomings in education.

Accountability in action

South Africa follows a consultative process in coming about development policies, programmes and projects. The processes are designed to ensure public participation and consensus. The various policies and plans of government in the democratic era have centred on economic growth and redress of the legacies of apartheid.

All tiers of government and public institutions in South Africa are required to comply with public accountability mechanisms of the government-wide monitoring and evaluation system (GWMES) and the Public Finance and Management Act (PFMA). GWMES was approved in 2005 to provide harmonized framework for monitoring and evaluation in the public sector in South Africa. The PFMA is aimed at improving transparency, accountability and sound financial management in government and public institutions.

South Africa has a rich history of youth and student activism

In the political front, some of the prominent leaders (Mandela, Ashby Mda, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo) rose from the ranks of the ANC youth league. Steve Biko’s black consciousness movement of the 1960s added to the forces of opposition to the apartheid system, particularly the Bantu education policy. Biko promoted his black consciousness philosophy through organised student formations. The students’ uprising of June 1976 is seen as one of the stoutest confrontations of the apartheid regime.

In 2015, South Africa witnessed a wave of #feesmustfall protests across university campuses in the country. The campaign was so intense that it is considered as the strongest student uprising since 1976. Recently a much awaited report was released by the Presidential Commission looking into the calls of the protesters. It found that the South African state may not have the capacity to fund free higher education for all. An arrangement for government-guaranteed student loan from commercial banks was suggested. This recommendation may not be adequate for the poorest of the poor. One success of the protest seen in the report, however, is its recommendation to scrap registration fees at universities and increase the share of the budget going to higher education from about 0.7% to at least 1% of GDP.

Social media also played a big role in holding a private textbook publisher, Pearson, to account. In July 2016 a student’s question on Facebook highlighted a textbook depicting a sexual assault scenario, which suggested blaming the victim. This attracted media attention and civil protest, which caused the publisher to amend the text and apologise.

2017/8 GEM Report recommendations

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By Camilla Croso, President, Global Campaign for Education

In 2015, the world committed to a Sustainable Development Goal to achieve equitable, inclusive and free quality education and lifelong learning for all. This was the result of negotiation, research, and sustained citizen-led campaigning – all steeped in fifteen years of experience from the Education for All movement. It is now time for governments to prove they are working to realise the new SDG targets on education. It is time to deliver.

This week is the Global Campaign for Education’s Global Action Week, which provides an annual opportunity for citizens worldwide to act as a targeted, united force for change. This year, we are asking citizens and governments alike to Stand Up for Education, by ensuring accountability for Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), and enabling active citizen participation.

Challenges in delivering the goal

Despite education being a critical enabler of other human rights, it has long faced many hurdles. Recent geo-political shifts have challenged the process of global consensus-building, which is vital for the realisation of the SDGs. At the same time, we are bearing witness to continued and worsening conflict. And we are finding stronger barriers to civil society taking an active role in holding governments to account, with reports of aggressive action to limit civil society activity. Citizens must have a voice in any decision-making process, which impacts their lives, at all levels; this is critical – and intrinsic – to the realisation of the SDGs.

A longer-term challenge is the financing of education: a combination of reduced aid to education, and insufficient domestic resources in developing countries, has left 263 million children and youth out of school, and 758 million adults unable to read or write.

Opportunities for change 

To deliver education on the ground, national attention must focus on the status of education, and political will must be leveraged. While GCE has expressed its profound disagreement with regressive measures – for example, the recently approved constitutional change in Brazil that freezes the education budget for twenty years – we are also focusing on upcoming opportunities for ensuring commitments are upheld. Here are several important areas of action:

National and provincial elections are to be held in many countries: in France, Coalition Éducation has asked election candidates to pledge to increase aid to education; in the US, in the wake of the elections, GCE-US has garnered the support of 90 Members of Congress to support global education; and in Ecuador, Contrato Social por la Educación has engaged candidates to step up to commitments made in the international arena.

GCE members are also mobilising to participate in the UN´s Voluntary National Reviews, which governments are completing to report on their progress in implementing the SDGs. GCE has produced a new briefing to support coalitions to work towards this objection.

Education civil society actors are organising themselves at the global level in the accountability processes for the SDGs: GCE, along with Education International, the International Council for Adult Education, and the European Students’ Union, represent an Organising Partner for the newly-formed Education and Academia Stakeholder Group, which has a formal role in the UN accountability structures and reports into the High-level Political Forum, the UN’s central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Global Action Week for Education offers a broad opportunity for change by inciting individuals and organisations to mobilise their networks, constituents, and friends to take part.

In Latin America, Foro Socioeducativo in the Dominican Republic is running numerous activities including the launch of the Guide on Education Policies for Educational Institutions – which aims to make explicit the alignment of the SDG4 targets with the national education plan, a workshop and seminar on the implementation of SDG4 and the progress and challenges in delivering the Education Agenda 2030, a paper on aligning SDG4 with the national education agenda, and several round tables, debates and reflections on different aspects of education.

In the Middle East, the Yemeni coalition, Yemen Coalition for Education for All, is collecting 100,000 signatures demanding that the government and international organisations fulfil their promises concerning the implementation of SDG4. The coalition has also coordinated with the Ministry of Education so that all schools on 29 April will hear morning speeches on SDG4, the government’s accountability, and the commitment of the Ministry to the pledges. In addition, a newsletter on accountability will be distributed in schools and universities.

In Africa, the Tanzania Education Network/Mtandao wa Elimu Tanzania (TEN/MET) held a meeting with reporters updating them on activities to be held in Nanyumbu (Mtwara Region) over the course of this week. This will include school/community awareness in Nanyumbu villages, calling upon all stakeholders to be responsible for improving the quality of education in the district. Mass demonstrations and public meetings have already taken place in Mtwara.

In Asia, the Philippines national coalition, E-Net, is advocating for the whole SDG4 agenda, and demanding that overlooked targets on early childhood, and on youth and adults be given due attention in implementation policies. At the same time, there are demands to increase education financing and ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the education budget. The coalition will hold a public display of the SDG4 targets, a forum on the role of different SDG4 stakeholders and a workshop on early childhood care and development.

In Europe, the Albanian Coalition for Child Education launched Global Action Week in the Centre for Openness and Dialogue in Tirana, with representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister. The coalition is also holding open forums with young people in 8 regions, and running a public consultation with CSOs and Ministry of Education on the education budget.

From Colombia to Vietnam, Norway to Togo, many different activities are taking place. It is no exaggeration to say that millions of citizens worldwide are standing up for education this week and demanding that their governments deliver.

The education community, in particular the education civil society movement, campaigned hard to ensure that the SDG4 goal and targets and ED2030 Framework for Action are rights-based and encompass the full extent of the education agenda. While we strongly support all efforts made to improve the level and quality of learning, accountability cannot be reduced to measures of testing and teacher performance. Our struggle for accountability in the coming years spotlights the role and responsibility of governments as duty-bearers, who must protect, respect and fulfil the right to inclusive, quality, public and free education for all.

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There are a few vital changes necessary for education to deliver on our expectations. Firstly, there is an urgent need for progress in education to speed up. If current trends continue, the world will achieve universal primary education in 2042, universal lower secondary education in 2059 and universal upper secondary education in 2084. This means the world would be half a century late for the 2030 SDG deadline.

The Report, Education for people and planet, also shows that education systems need to ensure they are giving people vital skills and knowledge that can support the transition to greener industries and find new solutions for environmental problems. Environmental concern has been decreasing in almost all countries over the past two decades. In OECD countries, almost 40% of students only have basic knowledge about the environment, for instance. But, while in the majority of countries, education is the best indicator for climate change awareness and mitigation, recent analysis shows that half of countries’ curricular frameworks did not explicitly mention ‘climate change’ or ‘environmental sustainability’ even once.

Many education systems are also putting traditional knowledge systems at risk. As Mundiya Kepanga (left), a chief from an indigenous community said at our global launch event in London today, “an education that doesn’t respect cultures can teach us selfishness and greed that can destabilize our traditional structures and lead to the destruction of our environment”.  Local languages contain much of the vital information held within different cultures about the functioning of our ecosystem, yet 40% are taught in a language they don’t understand, putting that knowledge at risk.

In order to find new and innovative solutions for environmental crises, it would be a repeat of past mistakes to think that learning stops when students leave or graduate from school. Education must continue beyond the school walls, in communities and the workplace throughout adulthood. Yet currently two-thirds of adults worldwide are financially illiterate; 63% of adults in the EU never attended a non-formal education programme in a recent year; only 6% of adults in the poorest countries have ever attended literacy programmes.

There is also an urgent need for education systems to impart higher skills aligned with the needs of growing economies, where job skill sets are fast changing, many being automated. Shifting to a more prosperous, inclusive world will mean giving people the right skills for work. Yet, a third of people in the EU are currently unable to put an attachment on an email; half cannot do basic arithmetic in a spreadsheet. On current rates, by 2020, the world could have 40 million too few workers with tertiary education relative to demand. Education has to reconfigure to keep up.  The Report shows this change is vital: achieving universal upper secondary education by 2030 in low income countries would lift 60 million out of poverty by 2050.

Similarly, inequality in education, interacting with wider disparities, heightens the risk of violence and conflict. Across 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, regions that have very low average education had a 50% chance of experiencing conflict within 21 years.  The Report calls on governments to start taking inequalities seriously, tracking them with comparable surveys on education carried out house to house.

In short, the Report asks us all to rethink how education is organized, the contents it prioritizes and for what purposes. It reminds us all that, if we are serious about meeting our new global development agenda, we must ask much more from our education systems than just a transfer of conventional knowledge and basic skills. With such a vast responsibility, and ability to foster meaningful change, complacency in education now would be reckless. Now, more than ever, we need our schools, universities and lifelong learning programmes to focus on economic, environmental and sociocultural perspectives that help nurture empowered, critical, mindful and competent citizens.

Visit the online social media pack in six languages for the Report and share it’s key findings with your networks. 

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When we asked the question to you via twitter, we received the following fairly telling response:

Let’s see how the question is answered by three different points of view in Ethiopia: the Ministry of Education, a school principal and a student.

School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

A/ Response from the Ministry of Education

By Fedlu Redi (School improvement program directorate, primary education program expert), Ministry of education, Ethiopia

Before we answer this question, it is important to see what activities are implemented by the Ethiopian government and other stakeholders to provide quality education at the school level and what are the responsibilities of school principals in supporting these efforts. Then we can easily identify where the blame should go.

In Ethiopia, currently there are more than 35,000 primary and 2,000 secondary government schools. Government schools account for about 96% of school enrollment and non-government schools account for the rest. Where schools do not exist, the first cycle of primary education is delivered through Alternative Basic Education Centers, which follows a curriculum different from that of primary schools.

The provision of education is the concurrent responsibility of federal, regional, and local governments (woredas). The main functions of the federal government are policy formulation, monitoring and evaluation, development of secondary curriculum, and secondary teacher preparation. The mandate for general education lies mainly with regional governments. Woredas/local government education offices are also responsible for the management and supervision of primary schools, whereas the management and supervision of secondary schools is shared between woredas and regions.

The Ethiopian government prepares and implements an education sector development programme (ESDP) every five years to ensure the quality of education provided to schools from grade one to twelve. But the mandate of a school principal is to lead his/her school according to that education policy in collaboration with the school community.

The government’s activities so far that are aimed at providing a quality education  take the form of a general education quality improvement package made up of six sub programs including curriculum improvement, teachers and education leaders development, schools improvement, ICT development, schools leadership improvement and civics education improvement. These six sub programs are being implemented in all schools in the country.

Federal and regional governments then implement the revised curriculum, procure learning materials, and work to strengthen assessments. Their activities also include improved in-service and pre-service training of teachers, school improvement planning and school grants and capacity building for planning and management, and strengthened education management and information systems.

The responsibilities of school principals, meanwhile, include the following:

• Monitoring the effectiveness of schools’ teaching and learning processes
• Preparing and implementing the annual and strategic plan
• Allocating enough budget to equip the school with the required facilities  to create a healthy learning environment
• Working together with the school community

From what we discussed up to now, there is no doubt that school principals are the primary parties accountable for the quality of education at the school level. But different stakeholders also have  their own share in the responsibility. For instance, parent-teacher associations (PTSA) and the whole community around the school, supervisors and local education officers up to the ministry of education at the national level are also accountable for failures in the quality of education at the school level.

Therefore, school principals are accountable but not solely accountable for the quality of education.

B/ Response of school principal

By Shemlash Zewdie Bekele (Principal) From Kokebetsibah Secondary and preparatory school  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The answer is definitely YES. School leadership has become a priority in education policy agendas internationally and nationally, because it plays a key role in improving school outcomes by influencing the motivations and capacities of teachers, as well as the school climate and environment. Effective school leadership is essential to improve the efficiency and equity of schooling.

Being a school principal is a well-established position that provides instructional leadership by coordinating curricula, co-curricular programs and is responsible for the general administration of the school. The principals as instructional leaders are at the vantage positions to supervise, monitor, assess, evaluate and disseminate current information on educational issues and modern teaching techniques to teachers in order to stimulate them for best practices in curriculum delivery.

The Ethiopian government has designed various packages to assure quality of education. It is known that quality assurance is achieved in schools that have strong principals who devote considerable time to coordinating and managing instruction; such principals are highly visible in the school and stay close to the instructional process.

The following are some major responsibilities of principals to bring quality of education:

• Supporting, evaluating and developing teacher quality,
• Goal-setting, assessment and accountability,
• Shaping a vision of academic success for all students,
• Managing people, data and processes,
• Creating a climate hospitable to education,
• Cultivating leadership in others,
• Strategic financial and human resource management,
• Collaborating with other schools and so on

All these activities are vital to the quality of education. Therefore, since a principal has the responsibility to work on the above issues, it indicates that he/she is accountable for the failure of quality of education.

C/ A student from Minilik secondary school, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

School principals have a big role to play for the quality of education in the school by preventing different obstacles that hinder teaching and learning.

This is possible only by working collaboratively with students and other school community members. Although in our school principals are hard workers, generally speaking, some do not have close contact with students and even with teachers. The reason could be that they are busy. But they need to make time. Otherwise they do not even understand the feelings and problems of students and this could lead to a failure in the quality of education given.

Therefore, yes, principals have a responsibility for the level of the quality of education given at school.

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Ever since they first appeared in the 1980s, university rankings continue to grow in number and popularity as basic reference points of tertiary education institution performance. In 2015, eleven global ranking systems produced updated lists.

The initial idea of establishing university rankings was twofold: first to help keep university programs relevant and second, to push universities to provide the best quality education, by creating a form of competition.   Students were then meant to use these rankings to explore the higher education options that exist beyond their own countries’ borders and to compare key aspects of schools’ research and teaching missions.  In design, therefore, they are set up to help students and governments hold universities to account; in reality, they are hotly contested. Why?

Rankings attract attention because they are simple to understand. However, they have methodological flaws. First, they exclude the vast majority of universities around the world and collect information only on universities whose faculties have produced at least a few hundred publications in the prior year. This creates a near obsession with the status of the top 100 universities over others, none of which are in Africa, Latin America or the Arab World, for instance.

In addition, governments frequently allocate resources according to these rankings. This leads to the question as to whether the assessments result in universities thinking strategically about partnerships, programmes, exchanges and academic disciplines, rather than about just providing a quality higher education. With resources associated to them, the rankings may also reinforce or strengthen divides, leaving lower ranked universities struggling to receive funds that will help them improve. Indeed, many believe the rankings end up being about resources, rather than having anything to do with the provision of quality education.

Opponents also argue that, despite methodological improvements, university rankings are still primarily marketing tools that rely heavily on institutional reputation and faculty publications. As currently designed, many feel that rankings are not based on indicators of teaching quality or student learning that are reliable, valid, standardised and internationally comparable. Others feel that the rankings should at the very least also reflect important differences in the national or regional context in which universities offer specialized degree programs.

Weighted rankings undermine the likelihood of collaboration between high income and low income country universities. They also serve to encourage the international migration of educated young scholars (brain drain) and, ultimately, increase inequity.  What might have been set up to increase accountability, therefore, many argue is doing the exact opposite.

It’s a provocative debate. What do you think? Join the consultation

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We will be addressing this issue in the GEM 2017 as we take on the broad issue of Accountability in Education, and hope you might share your opinion with us via our online consultation as we gear up to begin our research. We raised the issue in our second twitter poll recently, with eight out of ten respondents saying private schools need to be better regulated.

Regulating private schools can take various forms including by governments providing a sound policy framework for private schools to function within. If governments define the place of private providers in the national education strategy, as in Cote d’Ivoire, or Senegal, it enables their expansion, but can also demarcate how they will fit within the overall education system.

Likewise, countries can impose registration rules over who can enter the education marketplace and how, including ensuring that they follow certain minimum standards. However, these must be designed carefully so as not to deter new providers where they might be needed, or increase their costs to such a degree that it pushes up fees. In addition, too much regulation can push private schools to operate outside of the law as unregistered providers, leaving little or no accountability in practice.

Once set up, countries can look to then regulate the standards maintained by private schools by assessing their performance through school inspectors, for instance. These can be accompanied by school self-evaluations that include perspectives of various stakeholders, such as parents and students. They can take the form of low stakes learning assessments, or a combination of various of these all at once. Whether such official regulation does, in effect, actually safeguard or improve standards in practice, however, tends to vary.

Alternatively, and most frequently cited, regulation could involve caps on fees, and other informal charges to parents linked with attending private schools. Many countries and jurisdictions either limit or attempt to limit the level of tuition fees charged by private schools. In India, private schools are prohibited from making profit on the service, for instance.

The flip side to fee capping is that it risks reducing the level of quality the schools can provide, given that they must operate within a much tighter budget than if they had full freedom over charging fees. This will hit the hardest those who might not operate with the advantages of scale, for instance a local entrepreneur who wishes to give back to the community, but might want to set up specifically in one small area where there’s a dearth of schools.  It is no surprise that this particular form of regulation sparks healthy debates worldwide. Just last year, Pakistan and Tanzania have had back and forth over government plans to set indicative fee structures.

And, of course, along with any examination over types of frameworks set up to enforce accountability, we have also to assess whether they are actually effective or not. Rules set on paper, of course, may easily not end up actually applying in practice. In many of the contexts that have seen strong private sector growth, there have been on-going concerns over the efficiency and quality of existing public education systems. The capacity and experiences of current government approaches to hold private schools to account needs to be carefully investigated.

What do you think? And what should we investigate as we begin our research? Join our consultation

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 Hannah-May Wilson, Program Manager – PAL Network Secretariat

On the sparkling shores of the seaside town of Saly on the Petite Côte of Senegal, 50 ambitious education activists and innovators from 15 Global South countries convened last week to explore the next crucial stage of their learning journey at the 4^th Annual PAL Network meeting.

The People’s Action for Learning Network (PAL Network) is an internationally recognized south-south collaboration whose member countries work across three continents to assess the basic reading and numeracy competencies of over 1 million children annually, in their homes, through citizen-led assessments.

This is a journey that started in India more than ten years ago when a group of concerned citizens from India’s largest NGO, Pratham, decided to find out whether or not children were acquiring basic skills, regardless of their age or schooling status. This exercise came to be known as the The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), which has since spread organically to 8 other countries and continues to expand.

The 4^th Annual Meeting of PAL Network members welcomed representatives from six additional countries to join its member base of nine countries. Four countries were granted provisional member status for demonstrating significant progress and commitment towards piloting their own citizen-led assessments. In addition, Mozambique, Ghana and Cameroon formally joined the family this month, and Bangladesh will follow this week.

Why citizen-led assessments matter

This growth is taking place against a backdrop of recognition at both national and international levels of citizen-led assessments as ‘one of the most internationally influential educational initiatives of the decade.’ The findings from these assessments are widely cited and underpin important commentary on learning in the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report).

Collectively, this movement has been critical in shifting attention away from the exclusive focus on access, mainly in the MDGs, to one on learning embedded in the post 2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs). The PAL Network’s collective insistence on the need for early grade reading indicators in the post-2015 framework has ensured that the SDG Indicator 4.1 includes the measurement of learning outcomes as a gauge of success by 2030.

Moving from assessment to action: start with the end in mind

As the R4D evaluation report published in June 2015 confirmed – ‘despite the tremendous influence citizen-led assessments have had on the education debate, they have not resulted in widespread, effective action for learning improvement’. This sparked global debate over the pathways to achieving better learning outcomes for children across the developing world and as Dr. Rukmini Banerji confirms – ‘the flurry of interest is welcome’. It has influenced the theme of our 4^th Annual meeting: “Moving from Assessment to Action’.

The need to move the discourse along is not new to many members of the PAL Network. In India already, for instance, the past ten years has seen an explosion of experimental interventions that aim to improve learning, including the recently launched Lakhon Mein Ek campaign, run by Pratham and ASER India.

Pratham’s interventions have inspired other network members to look beyond the collection of assessment data to interventions that improve learning. As Dr. Monazza Aslam explains, ‘The first step of the journey was to create some noise, and few would argue that ASER [Pakistan] hasn’t been successful in doing that. The next step, however, is harder still. Now we have to move beyond creating a furor to taking positive actions. And it is critical that the right steps are taken now if we are to come close to achieving the ambitious SDGs’.

During the PAL Network Annual Meeting, ASER Pakistan shared their adaptation of Read India’s evaluated learning camp program – Chalo Parho Barho (Let’s Read and Grow), whilst Jàngandoo arranged for us to visit their remedial learning programs in Thiès, Medina and Rufisque.

As the network members shared their experiences, some of the newer network countries such as LEARNigeria and TPC Mozambique committed to ‘start with the end in mind’. In a blog post written by Dr. Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, she reiterates LEARNigeria’s ‘commitment to a participatory approach that prepares the ground for meaningful action once the evidence is generated’.

Use the data to isolate the problem; use an intervention as its solution

The importance of retaining the regular ‘thermometer’ on learning levels is a point of agreement across the network. Dr. Banerji explains that the links between the data collection and the interventions are direct. Both initiatives are integrally linked to each other. Whether at the village level or the state level, ASER helps people understand the problem, and Read India enables village volunteers and teachers to find solutions.

Ruth Levine from the Hewlett Foundation also emphasized the role of the assessments in producing data that creates an enabling environment for ‘actions’ to be taken. The assessment continues to have relevance by providing feedback about whether the actions that are taken to improve children’s learning are actually bearing fruit.

As the agenda and ambition for the work grows, members of the PAL Network are excited about the potential. In partnership with a wide variety of education activists and innovators all over the world, we are excited to explore how citizens can find their own solutions within their communities to respond to the education of their children – using information provided by citizen-led assessments. After all – if citizens are not involved in seeing and understanding the problem – how can we expect them to be a part of the solution? 

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