Progress towards target 4.1 will be seen as a key measure of government and international community commitment to the SDGs.

Target 4.1 envisages quality education and universal primary and secondary school completion as a path to relevant and effective learning outcomes. There has been a lot of interest in the monitoring indicators for this target and the three main concepts that feature in it: completion, quality and learning.

The ambition of universal completion of primary and secondary education

The target has been criticized for its level of ambition. While the new agenda aims to achieve 12 years of education for the current cohort by 2030, it should not be forgotten that 25 million children do not even access primary school. Almost 30% of children from the poorest 20% of households in low income countries had never been to school in 2008-2014.

Looking at participation, 91% of children of primary school age, 84% of adolescents of lower secondary age and 63% of youth of upper secondary age were in school. But with many children starting school late, and high levels of students repeating years, this indicator can provide an overly optimistic picture.

The new agenda therefore marks an important step forward with its emphasis on completion, instead of participation, an approach the GEM Report has advocated in recent years. Over the period 2008–2014, the upper secondary completion rate was 84% in high income countries, 43% in upper middle income countries, 38% in lower middle income countries and 14% in low income countries – equivalent to a global average of 43%.

Yet inequalities are massive: while 93% of adolescents from the richest households in high income countries complete upper secondary school, just 1% of the poorest girls do so in low income countries.

The shift in emphasis from monitoring participation to monitoring completion needs to be better understood by stakeholders. It is important to communicate to education ministries that completion rates will be the touchstone for monitoring progress toward target 4.1. [Tweet]

Narrowing down the debate on quality?

The proposed monitoring framework focuses on a limited number of quality indicators related to: (i) equity, such as the percentage of children who are taught in their home language, or the financing policies countries implement to address disadvantage in education; and (ii) learning outcomes.

The GEM Report used an indicative framework to guide overall discussions of quality and highlighted two aspects. First, textbook (or any reading book) availability and use can be critical for making progress in the poorest countries. In Chad, about 90% of grade 2 and 6 reading and mathematics students had to share textbooks with at least 2 other peers.

Second, classroom observation-based indicators can bring critical aspects of teaching practice and pedagogy to policy-makers’ attention. A survey of 15,000 classrooms in Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica and Peru showed that teachers spent about 60–65% of their time on academic instruction, well below the recommended 85%. While it is difficult to advocate for such indicators at global level to compare education practices around the world, it is important for countries to search for tools that are adaptable yet reliable, valid, cost-efficient and easy to use at scale.

Learning outcome measures as a means for better learning outcomes

The key outstanding question is how the international community will monitor ‘relevant and effective learning outcomes’. This involves the content of learning (defining what is ‘relevant’) as well as whether it is achieving various aims (defining what is ‘effective’).

Monitoring learning outcomes will require the building of robust national learning assessment systems that take country priorities into account. Comparable learning outcome indicators need to serve not just the objective of global monitoring; rather, it should primarily serve country needs and help them reform their policy and improve their education practices.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics has initiated a process to address these challenges through the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML). It is seeking to improve the documentation of national learning assessments by collecting essential background information. It is also aiming to define the broad content of the learning outcomes that different learning achievement surveys seek to assess. Finally, it is outlining a process that would assure the quality of existing assessments and provide feedback to countries that would like to improve them.

These are steps in the right direction. That said, it is critical for countries themselves to participate in the design of the process through which their national assessments will be quality assured. [Tweet]

Overly stringent technical requirements could put the necessary capacity beyond the reach of many countries and result in a limited pool of service providers administering most assessments, undermining their relevance and use by countries. Resources to bolster national capacity to conduct better learning assessments should also be allocated more efficiently than currently is the case.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

More published blogs in this series:

Target 4c – What is at stake for monitoring progress on teachers?

Target 4b – What is at stake for monitoring progress on scholarships?

Target 4a – What is at stake for monitoring progress on effective learning environments?

Target 4.7 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on education for global citizenship and sustainable development?

Target 4.6 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on adult literacy and numeracy?

Target 4.5 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on equity in education?

Target 4.4 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on skills for work?

Target 4.3 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on technical, vocational, tertiary and adult education?

Target 4.2 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on early childhood education?

The post Target 4.1 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on primary and secondary education? appeared first on World Education Blog.

The SDG target on early childhood development, care and education is the only one where two global indicators have been proposed: the participation rate in pre-primary education, and the proportion of children who are developmentally on track. This reflects both a great interest in early learning foundations but also uncertainties over the feasibility of measuring early childhood development outcomes.

Target 4.2 reaffirms the international community’s focus on ensuring strong foundations for all children in the youngest age group through early childhood care and education. Monitoring the concepts in the target poses at least two challenges: first, there is not yet sufficient information on how many – and which – children benefit from pre-primary education for at least one year; and, second, while the target goes beyond care and education to early childhood development, a monitoring mechanism for the latter is still at an early stage.

Improving the sources of data for measuring early childhood education participation

Comparing participation rates across countries is more difficult for pre-primary than for primary and secondary education. First, relatively few countries have free and/or compulsory pre-primary education: it is compulsory in 50 countries, and free and compulsory for at least one year in just 38.

Second, pre-primary education age groups and starting ages are less standardized than at other levels. The pre-primary education gross enrolment ratio has traditionally been used to monitor participation. It expresses the total number of children enrolled in pre-primary education as a percentage of all children of pre-primary school age as defined by each country. Globally, this ratio was 44% in 2014.

However, this ratio underestimates the percentage of children who have been in pre-primary school for at least one year, which is the focus of the Education 2030 Framework for Action. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics has introduced a new indicator, which shows that, globally, about 67% of children one year younger than the primary school entrance age were enrolled in pre-primary or primary education in 2014.

This is a considerably improved indicator. Nevertheless, an obvious disadvantage is that it includes children who enrol early in primary school, some of whom may have not attended pre-school, which means that enrolment in pre-school is slightly overestimated.

This indicator is close to, but does not always coincide with, evidence from household surveys. Household surveys estimate previous experience of pre-primary education among first-grade students based on questions addressed to their parents and guardians. They have the advantage of tracking attendance levels by individual characteristics other than sex. Among 3- to 4-year-olds in about 50 low and middle income countries, children in the richest households were almost six times as likely as the poorest children to attend early childhood education.

Household surveys may also be better placed to capture attendance in private preschools, which is prevalent in many low and middle income countries but is not always captured by government data sources.

Even existing household surveys do not adequately capture the diversity of available services. Current approaches to measurement do not consider many characteristics of provision. For example, how strong are the education and learning components in organised early childhood programmes outside of pre-primary education? National and international household surveys should improve their questions to capture the full diversity of organized learning programmes. [Tweet]

Developing monitoring mechanisms of early childhood development outcomes

Target 4.2 focuses on ensuring children begin formal schooling developmentally on track and ‘ready for primary school’. This holistic view marks a shift from a view of child development based exclusively on health-related indicators.

The global indicator is the “proportion of children under 5 years of age who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being”. But deciding how best to measure child development is complex. There is a need to track normative development across cultures and develop measurement approaches accordingly.

The early childhood development measure with the highest country coverage is the UNICEF Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI). Across 56 mostly low and middle income countries over 2010–2015, about 70% of 3-year-olds and 80% of 4-year-olds were developmentally on track according to this definition. While the index consists of four components it is strongly determined by one of them: literacy and numeracy.

Some believe that this measurement approach can be improved because it may be reflecting norms on early education rather than monitoring young children’s cognitive capacity. To understand whether children are reaching their development potential, more research is needed on measures of early childhood development that are valid across a wide range of countries. [Tweet]

The post Target 4.2 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on early childhood education? appeared first on World Education Blog.

Target 4.3 covers a very wide range of education opportunities. For monitoring progress, two issues stand out. First, we must begin collecting information on adults participating in education programmes. Second, we need a common understanding of what makes access to technical, vocational, tertiary and adult education affordable.

Target 4.3 has expanded the scope of the international education agenda by including tertiary education. However, its defining feature is perhaps less the target and more the global indicator for the target, which covers adult education. The global indicator calls for us to measure the percentage of youth and adults participating in formal or non-formal education or training in the previous 12 months. This goes well beyond just technical, vocational and tertiary education, and expands the scope of the international agenda even further.

Going beyond technical, vocational and tertiary – to also capture adult education

The global indicator, by including adult education, corrects an important mistake. SDG 4 refers to ‘lifelong learning opportunities for all’. Lifelong learning comprises all activities undertaken throughout life with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies from a personal, civic, social or employment-related perspective but is often understood to mainly refer to education opportunities for adults. Yet none of the targets refers to adult education, which is a major omission given how vital it is for ensuring we can work our way to a more sustainable way of living.

Some data is available on adult participation in formal primary and secondary education. It shows that, of all those enrolled, adults made up 4% in primary, 5% in lower secondary and 10% in upper secondary education according to the UIS. However, this only gives a partial picture.

The diversity of non-formal education opportunities for adults makes the task of monitoring total participation particularly difficult.

In Europe, major efforts have been made to develop relevant data collection tools ever since the European Union (EU) set an adult education participation rate target of 15% by 2020. The Adult Education Survey (AES) was carried out in 2007 and 2011 in 30 countries in Europe, with a third round scheduled for 2016. The 2011 round indicated that during the 12 months prior to the survey 6% of adults participated in formal education and 37% in non-formal education in the 28 EU countries. The non-formal education programmes referred to in this survey capture to a large extent, though not exclusively, workplace-based education and training related to vocational skills.

However, such a tool does not exist in other regions. And until it does, it will not be possible to monitor this global indicator – and much of the emphasis of this agenda on lifelong learning risks being lost. The international community needs to examine workable options to collect information on adult formal and non-formal education opportunities around the world. [Tweet]

Affordability – a missing piece in monitoring target 4.3

In reviewing the monitoring challenges of the SDG agenda, the 2016 GEM Report looked not only at the indicators that have been proposed but also those that have not. Target 4.3 refers to affordable education. However, there is no mention of affordability in the indicators being put forward, even though this holds the key for ensuring “equal access”.

There is no doubt that defining and measuring affordability is difficult, because what is affordable depends on the relationship between income and costs, which is, of course, always variable.

On the income side of the equation, for instance, it is not only current income that matters but also the forgone income and the future income, neither of which is straightforward to estimate.

Collating information on direct costs is not straightforward either. For example, in the case of tertiary education, tuition, registration and examination fees often differ by subject area and by institution, especially between public and private.

Detailed national data on costs are easier to find in countries where there is a government policy to make tertiary education participation more affordable. For example, governments and tertiary education institutions may provide grants, repayable loans and discounted accommodation (halls of residence), food (canteens) or transport (travel cards).

It is therefore understandable that a single indicator may be unable to assess affordability. One way forward proposed by our Report is to compare the financial burden on households for education access with the financial assistance they are offered by governments. For example, across 26 countries in Europe, as this figure shows, households contributed an average of 15% of total expenditure for tertiary education institutions in 2011 while aid to students made up 18% of public tertiary education expenditure.

Behind the averages, there is substantial variation between countries. In Norway, there are almost no fees and aid was used to compensate for differences in students’ ability to afford living costs during their studies. In Cyprus and the United Kingdom, aid was used to offset the impact of high tertiary education fees.

While the proposed indicator framework entirely ignores affordability, progress towards this target in the next 15 years requires us to address it. As this figure shows, existing information can help us grapple with the issue. The international community should define the components of affordability of technical, vocational, tertiary and adult education as a first step so that the relevant data can be collected. There is another step then needed if we are to fully understand whether or not these policies are targeting the poorest or not.

The post Target 4.3 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on technical, vocational, tertiary and adult education? appeared first on World Education Blog.

Global monitoring of skills for decent work is likely to prove elusive because of the loose definitions of the target. However, by focussing on digital skills, we could help promote this agenda as long as these measures are culturally unbiased, are sensitive to changes in technology, and include adults.

Target 4.4 draws attention to decent work, which is enshrined within Articles 6 and 7 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Decent work respects fundamental human rights as well as worker rights in terms of work safety, remuneration and the physical and mental integrity of the worker. The ILO has further developed the concept.

It is less clear what skills are needed for decent work, however. Simply put, skills needed for work are specific to the job opportunities, which differ enormously across countries. Other than the foundational cognitive skills of literacy and numeracy, it is difficult to envisage any other skills for work that are amenable to global monitoring by satisfying three criteria: relevant in various labour market contexts,  measurable at low cost; and acquirable through education.

What skills are particularly relevant for work?

Some of the more valued skills for work that could be highlighted for this target are meanwhile not easy to define or assess. Creativity, for instance, involves producing novel and useful content through divergent thinking, exploring various possible solutions. It involves motivation, perseverance, focus, flexibility, independence and the ability to overcome problems. However, the very process of assessing these skills may be incompatible with the type of divergent thinking required.

Critical thinking is another valued skill. One commonly accepted definition of this skill includes six cognitive dimensions: the abilities to interpret, analyse, evaluate, infer, explain and self-regulate. These six abilities are easier to measure, but important non-cognitive elements of critical thinking, such as the ability to understand others’ opinions, are not.

Collaboration is another skill that is valued for work. This skill requires coordination, communication, conflict resolution, decision-making and negotiation. The 2015 PISA test by the OECD, which assessed collaborative problem solving, defines a student with a low level of this skill as someone who ‘pursues random or irrelevant actions, operates individually, and makes little contribution to resolve potential obstacles’. However, assessing these skills is still in exploratory stages. It requires being able to assess group weaknesses when teamwork breaks down, something which is not always obvious.

A focus on monitoring digital skills can help move the agenda forward – but care is needed

Faced with this monitoring challenge, the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) proposed that  information and communications technology (ICT) skills collected by households should form the global indicator using the definition of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). However, as this indicator is based on self-reported competencies related to computer use, it is too narrow in scope.

Instead, an emphasis on digital literacy skills, which is one of the thematic indicators, would have been preferable. It has three concrete advantages: it is broader than ICT skills; it is based on direct measurement of an actual skill, which should be a priority for this agenda; and it would help focus on a skill likely to become very relevant as a marker of disadvantage in the world of work for most people in the next 15 years.

Where there is data on this already, for instance, such as from the 2013 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), we can see that 85% of grade 8 students in the Czech Republic demonstrated a functional working knowledge of computers, compared with just 13% in Thailand and 9% in Turkey.

There are caveats to this indicator too, you may not be surprised to hear. Current school-based tools are prone to cultural bias both in terms of the questions asked and the approaches. Assessments of digital literacy skills need to be further developed to be suitable for monitoring in low and middle income countries. [Tweet]

Any global tool will need to address rapid technological change over time – and will also need to be designed to include adults.

Meanwhile, even if many of the skills we know are good for decent work but not suitable for large scale monitoring, this should not mean that education systems should not help learners acquire them. As with several of the targets,  indicators and data may take a while to firm up, but this does not mean progress towards our SDG4 ambitions should be held up.

This is the seventh in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

More published blogs in this series:

Target 4c – What is at stake for monitoring progress on teachers?

Target 4b – What is at stake for monitoring progress on scholarships?

Target 4a – What is at stake for monitoring progress on effective learning environments?

Target 4.7 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on education for global citizenship and sustainable development?

Target 4.6 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on adult literacy and numeracy?

The post Target 4.4 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on skills for work? appeared first on World Education Blog.

While there is progress toward monitoring education disparities, the new agenda calls for bolder steps to monitor different marginalized and vulnerable groups and the policies needed to overcome inequality.

The desire to ‘leave no one behind’ is the hallmark of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It has spurred demand for global monitoring and reporting of inequality, a trend also confirmed by the theme of UNESCO’s 2016 World Social Science Report. This year’s GEM Report looks at three issues at stake when monitoring equity in education: how we should report inequalities, who we should report on, and what else we should report on beyond parity

• How should we measure and report inequality?

The parity index is the proposed way for measuring inequalities in education at a global level. It expresses the value of an education indicator, such as access to education, or learning, for a disadvantaged group relative to its value for an advantaged group. The wealth parity index, for example, shows us that only 7 of the poorest 20% complete upper secondary education for every 100 of the richest 20% in low income countries.

The parity index is the easiest way of communicating about inequalities but is only one of several options, each with their respective pros and cons. Different measures can lead to different conclusions about the degree of inequality and its change over time, making it crucial that we agree upon the way we’re all going to measure inequalities and stick to it. However we look at it, the sheer number of education indicators, and the numerous ways that inequalities can be measured, with all their various combinations, means that there are hundreds of ways of reporting on inequalities, which presents a challenge.

One way to approach this issue is to visualize inequality. In recent years, the GEM Report’s World Inequality Database on Education has helped bring disparities in education opportunities between and within countries to the attention of the wider public. This year’s update of new data on WIDE also presents a new visualization of the parity index among other features.

Another way is to prioritize selected indicators and characteristics. The future launch of the Inter-Agency Group on Education Inequality Indicators has chosen to look at three indicators: attendance, over-age attendance, and completion. It will then enable consistent analysis of survey data and pooling of untapped data sources for those indicators, and those alone.

However, monitoring inequality at the global level is not enough and cannot substitute for actions at the national level.

Many education ministries rely on their school censuses, which only enable a limited look at education disparities. There are national statistical agencies often producing highly relevant information on education inequality through household or labour force surveys. But in many countries, education ministries lack the capacity to understand and make use of the information.

This situation needs to change. The GEM Report urges better dialogue and cooperation between education ministries and national statistical agencies to monitor, report and act on education inequality. [Tweet]

• Do we collect information from all marginalized and vulnerable groups?

Global comparisons of education disparities are currently possible only by sex, location and household wealth. The search for measures of other markers of disadvantage – notably disability, migration and displacement, language and ethnicity, citizenship status – needs to continue.

For example, the continuing neglect of mother-tongue-based multilingual education helps explain large disparities in education outcomes, as is shown by our WIDE database. By one measure, about 40% of people around the world lack access to instruction in a language they speak or understand. The GEM Report recommends that the international community put in place a mechanism to monitor language policy in education and its implementation. [Tweet]

• Beyond parity, what broader aspects of equity in education can be measured?

It is important to remember that equity is not just limited to parity.

In the case of gender, for instance, the parity index addresses only one of several domains in gender equality in education. To improve monitoring of gender equality in education, efforts need to focus on other aspects — for example, collecting evidence on gender aspects of curricula, textbooks, assessments and teacher education — as the GEM Report Gender Review also argued.

More generally, leaving no one behind will not be achieved solely by a proliferation of disparity measures. Data only get us so far in any discussion. There also needs to be a sustained effort to monitor the policies that countries are using to address inequalities in education, including policies outside education. The GEM Report believes that countries should be encouraged to collect and compare qualitative information on policies used to redress disadvantage in education [Tweet]. This will be best achieved in a regional framework where countries can learn by exchanging this information with their peers. Many inequalities in education are not easily altered, and tackling them will take concerted, comprehensive efforts in education and other sectors.

This is the sixth in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

More published blogs in this series:

The post Target 4.5 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on equity in education? appeared first on World Education Blog.

While the indicator for measuring adult literacy and numeracy skills is effective, many countries have yet to adopt the necessary tools to make monitoring it possible.

Target 4.6 is poorly formulated: it views literacy as something to be ‘achieved’, similar to the old belief that illiteracy was something to be ‘eradicated’.

However, the global indicator, which refers instead to the percentage of those achieving at least a ‘level of proficiency’ in functional literacy and numeracy skills, makes up for this deficiency. It comes closer to the view of literacy as not just a set of skills but also their application. It also recognizes recent advances in the direct assessments of skills.

One useful source of data for this indicator is the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). This assessment establishes a reporting framework of six proficiency levels describing tasks that individuals can typically undertake.

For example, individuals at literacy level 2 ‘can integrate two or more pieces of information based on criteria, compare and contrast or reason about information and make low-level inferences’. In the first round of PIAAC in 2011, which was administered in high income countries, 15% of adults fell below this basic proficiency standard, ranging from less than 5% in Japan to almost 28% in Italy.

The World Bank Skills Towards Employability and Productivity (STEP) survey, administered in urban areas of middle income countries, was designed to record results using PIAAC’s literacy scale. In Colombia, where 75% of people live in urban areas, STEP showed that 36% of the population in 13 major metropolitan areas scored below level 2. This stands in sharp contrast with Colombia’s official literacy rate of 94%.

However, these two assessment platforms do not cover all countries (and all age groups), leaving significant gaps in our monitoring of the target worldwide. How can we increase the number of countries that monitor adult proficiency levels in literacy and numeracy? And how can these skills be compared between countries if they use different questions, scale the responses in different ways, and use different approaches to describe proficiency levels? There are two options.

The first is to use a model like that followed by PIAAC and STEP. This adapts to the skill level of the respondent and makes it possible to cover a broader range of skills and difficulty levels. Countries would use statistical analysis to assess the skills of adults against a common scale. But such designs require a high capacity for statistical analysis and are therefore costly due to the need to train personnel and use computer technology.

The second is to use a simpler design in which all respondents receive the same assessment questions. An international expert group could create a common pool of such questions. All countries would be permitted to translate and adapt questions to local systems and circumstances. The number of usable questions and the range of skills would be lower. This may make the assessment less reliable. Nevertheless, this option may be more realistic given the resource constraints – and therefore able to be implemented regularly.

Our overarching recommendation for this target, therefore is that care should be taken to adopt a model for assessing adult literacy and numeracy skills that is both relevant and feasible for countries with few resources. [Tweet]

Unless progress is made soon in rolling out one of the two options, in 2030 we will still be measuring literacy and numeracy skills on the basis of what adults subjectively report as their own literacy levels or based on what others assess their skills to be. These methods are far less reliable or informative than direct assessments of literacy and numeracy skills. The international community continues to employ the conventional approach, as seen in the 2016 SDG report. Surely we deserve better.

This is the fifth in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Target 4.6 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on adult literacy and numeracy? appeared first on World Education Blog.

Target 4.7 explicitly links education to the broad Sustainable Development agenda and captures the transformative aspirations of education in relation to other SDGs.  It calls for key themes to be mainstreamed in curricular contents, teaching practices and assessment and be given greater importance in policy planning, even if these aims present a monitoring challenge.

The global indicator to monitor this target looks at the extent to which global citizenship education, education for sustainable development and gender equality are mainstreamed in national education policies, curricula content, teacher education and student assessment. The global indicator reflects the fact that the international community has recognised the importance of monitoring the content of education. This is positive, as it will encourage countries to reflect on what is taught in classrooms, and how, not just on numbers enrolling in or finishing a cycle of education.

However, it remains unclear how such information is to be collected and communicated at the national and global level. The currently proposed mechanism to monitor progress towards Target 4.7 is self-reporting by UNESCO member states in relation to the implementation of the 1974 Recommendation concerning ‘Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’. In the past low response rates and uneven report quality undermined the monitoring value of such information. Country reports need to be complemented by a more systematic and rigorous approach to all aspects of the global indicator and target itself.

The 2016 GEM Report reports different types of evidence related to the global indicator. For example, it developed a coding protocol to analyse the prevalence of relevant terms in national curriculum frameworks and related curricular materials. In collaboration with UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, the GEM Report reviewed over 110 national curriculum frameworks in primary and secondary education in 78 countries over 2005-2010. The review focused on five topic areas in target 4.7: human rights; gender equality; peace, non-violence and human security; sustainable development; and global citizenship/ interconnectedness.

These analyses carried out show the extent to which key terms related to the five topics were emphasized in countries’ curricular frameworks (see left).

The findings indicate that mentions related to the first topic on human rights are the most prevalent, with terms such as ‘rights’ appearing in 88% of countries’ curricula, ‘democracy’ in 79% and ‘freedom’ in 54%.

In addition, over 80% of the countries contained at least one term related to sustainable development. The most common terms were ‘sustainable development’ (73%), ‘ecology’ (55%) and ‘environmental education’ (47%). Key terms such as ‘social and economic sustainability’ and ‘education for sustainable development’ were present in less than one-third of the curricula.

While almost all countries included at least one term related to global citizenship in their curricula, the number of terms mentioned and the frequency with which countries make reference to them were more limited. Findings showed that about half of countries included terms like ‘globalization’ (51%), ‘multiculturalism’ (49%) and ‘global citizenship’ (42%); while only about 10% including concepts such as ‘global inequality’ and ‘global-local thinking’.

Gender equality is also less prevalent in national curricula: less than 15% of the countries integrated key terms such as ‘gender empowerment’, ‘gender parity’ or ‘gender-sensitive’, while half mention ‘gender equality’.

Such monitoring of the content of education is meant to supplement reflections of such themes in textbooks, teacher education courses, assessment items and policies. While the new analysis covers many more countries than any previous study, fewer than half of the world’s countries were included. The limited availability of up-to-date information on curricular contents and policies makes it hard to monitor the content of education at a wider scale.

We recommend that there be a new global mechanism to monitor the content of curricula and textbooks to help measure progress towards this target. [Tweet]. This would require close collaboration between national education ministries and regional or international organizations to ensure that the quality of the information is good and that the process is country-led. The mechanism could also cover other aspects of national policies, including teacher education programmes and learning assessments. It is an essential step if we are to know more about the types of things children are hearing when they step into class each day, and have an indication of the types of values they might end up having instilled in them by the time they leave at the end of school.

This is the fourth in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Target 4.7 – What is at stake for monitoring progress on education for global citizenship and sustainable development? appeared first on World Education Blog.

The concept of effective learning environments is minimally captured by the proposed indicators – but even supposedly measurable aspects of the target present major challenges for global comparisons.

The roots of target 4.a can be traced back to the concept of child-friendly schools promoted by UNICEF. Such schools should be child-centred, encourage democratic participation and promote inclusiveness.

However, it is expensive to carry out the observations needed to monitor whether these principles are followed. This makes it a difficult target for global comparisons.

Attention has therefore shifted to look at specific aspects, which are more easily measured, although perhaps less likely to capture the spirit of an ‘effective learning environment’. Yet even these aspects pose more monitoring challenges than is understood. Two examples demonstrate that.

1. In terms of water and sanitation infrastructure, only about 70% of primary schools had adequate water supply and sanitation in 2013 according to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. The corresponding figure was around 50% in the least developed countries.

However, caution is needed in the way this data is interpreted. Definitions are inconsistent across data sources or countries. For example, “adequate sanitation” may mean anything from the simple fact that a toilet exists to that toilet meeting some standard, such as that it has a flush, is ventilated, or is just an improved pit latrine. Precise definitions are not even available for 60% of countries.

In large part this is due to the difficulty of capturing the different dimensions of water supply and sanitation – including quantity, quality, proximity, functionality, gender segregation and accessibility to children with disabilities. A review of 54 school census questionnaires found that 48 included items on water and sanitation, but only Myanmar collected information on all parameters for water, and only Belize and Iraq for sanitation. Only 30 countries gave information on gender-segregated toilets.

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme is working with partners to recommend a core and expanded set of questions to help harmonize indicators across national monitoring systems.

In addition, a systematic process should be set up to review the quality of data on school water and sanitation [Tweet]. Data collection methods need to be reliable and observation-based to reflect the reality that students face.

2. School-related violence occurs on school premises but also on the way to school, at home or in Cyberspace, as we discussed in our latest Gender Review. While attention usually focuses on extreme events, such as shootings, more common forms of violence can have a huge negative impact on the education experience of children and adolescents. They tend to be underreported, as they often involve taboo subjects.

Bullying is the most widely documented form of violence in schools. In the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, about 41% of grade 8 students reported having been bullied at least once in the previous month.

Physical violence is also very common. About 40% of 13- to 15-year-olds in 37 countries reported having been involved in physical fights over 2009–2012 according to the Global School-based Student Health Survey. Sexual violence is highly destructive but much of its scale and scope remains hidden.

Large-scale, cross-country school-based surveys are increasingly used to collect data on aspects of violence in schools; some countries also have well-established monitoring mechanisms. Yet, overall, consistent evidence on the global prevalence of school-related violence is lacking. A recent report by the Technical Working Group on Data Collection on Violence against Children showed that studies use different definitions of violence and record different behaviours. Their methods are not consistent in terms of time frames, sequencing of questions, response options, privacy arrangements or ethical protocols.

Our key recommendation on this target is that there need to be coordinated questions on school-based violence across surveys to ensure that global trends are consistently measured [Tweet].

Target 4.a has turned attention to important aspects of education quality but there is a long way to go before we can be certain that progress is being made towards more effective learning environments.

This is the third in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Target 4a – What is at stake for monitoring progress on effective learning environments? appeared first on World Education Blog.

 

There is no mechanism yet in place to monitor the number of scholarships available, and the proposed global indicator that focuses on aid for scholarships only gives a very partial picture of the volume and type of such scholarships.

The roots of the target on scholarships can be traced back to a commitment made in the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011–2020. However, the target sits uneasily with two of the core principles of the sustainable development agenda: universality and equity.

Moreover, even the wording in the target fails in several practical respects. For example, by stating that scholarships must be ‘available to developing countries’, the target excludes large programmes where developing countries fund their own citizens to study abroad. And by stating that enrolment must take place ‘in developed countries and other developing countries’ it excludes cases where donors fund citizens of a developing country to study at home.

Governments are certainly not the only scholarship providers. However, it would be inappropriate to make non-state providers, such as corporations, foundations or philanthropists, accountable for the achievement of the target. Such funders are under no obligation to ‘substantially expand’ the provision of scholarships to students in ‘developing countries.’

If this target is to gain traction, it is important to monitor a wide range of scholarship programmes, since their availability can influence the policies of donor countries. But not all scholarship programmes should count as contributing to the target. For clarity, the 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report has proposed that we should count only scholarships that (i) refer to study in countries other than students’ home countries and (ii) are at least partly publicly funded.

The GEM Report commissioned the Institute of International Education to estimate how many scholarships were being provided using this definition. The research showed that some 22,500 scholarships were offered in 2015, equivalent to 1% of mobile students from developing countries. But it also highlighted that there is as yet no systematic data collection mechanism.

It is therefore essential to develop a global mechanism to collect data on the number of scholarship recipients, their country of origin and their fields of study [Tweet].

Additional information collected should include the duration of the scholarship; the number of scholarship recipients who complete their studies; and the number of scholarship recipients who return to their country of origin. Also needed is detailed information by sex, level of study, mode of study (e.g. on site or by distance) and country of study of scholarship recipients.

Scholarship programmes should share information that help us understand how they contribute to the target [Tweet]. A coordinating agency should be entrusted with the task of ensuring that common standards are used.

In the absence of a global mechanism saying how many scholarships there are, the international community decided that the global indicator should look at the ‘volume of official development assistance flows for scholarships by sector and type of study’. In 2014, US$2.8 billion of aid was allocated to scholarships and imputed student costs. Of this, US$386 million was directed to least developed countries and small island developing states.

However, donor countries vary a lot in how they report this expenditure. France and Germany include their public scholarship programmes and imputed student costs (i.e. indirect costs of tuition in donor countries) under their aid budget: indeed such spending accounts for more than half of their total direct aid to education. By contrast, the United Kingdom and the United States are major providers of scholarships but they register only a small proportion of these programmes as aid.

Monitoring this target according to aid flows does not therefore provide a valid or comprehensive picture of expenditure on scholarships and is not appropriate as a global indicator. Efforts need to focus on directly measuring the number of scholarships provided [Tweet]: the target date of 2020 means that there is no time to waste.

This is the second in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Target 4b – What is at stake for monitoring progress on scholarships? appeared first on World Education Blog.

Target 4.c focuses on the supply of qualified teachers. But what it means to be a trained teacher varies per country and the relevant standards are not documented. This means that data are not really comparable, making the job of monitoring the target hard.

A distinct target relating to the teaching profession is considered a welcome addition, as it had been missing from the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals agendas. However, there is also dissatisfaction with the narrow focus on the ‘supply of qualified teachers’.

The 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report goes beyond these relatively narrow confines and discusses the monitoring implications of the more general commitment, expressed in the Education 2030 Framework for Action, to ‘ensure that teachers and educators are empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained, professionally qualified, motivated and supported’ – the theme of this week’s World Teachers’ Day.

Even an established indicator may not be adequate and informative

The global indicator is the proportion of teachers who “have received at least the minimum organized teacher training (e.g. pedagogical) pre-service or in-service required for teaching” at each education level. This seems well-established and suitable to monitor the target. However, there are two important caveats.

1. There is a limited number of countries with data on trained teachers. In 2014, the percentage of countries with data varied from 22% in upper secondary education to 46% in primary. Coverage has increased little over time: it was 34% for primary education in 1999. No data is reported for Brazil, China, India, the Russian Federation and South Africa, for example.

Countries where there are large numbers of teachers in private schools or on short-term contracts find it more difficult to report on their qualifications.

2. Entry requirements for teachers to join the profession differ, making comparisons on teacher qualifications between countries difficult. The indicator is defined ‘according to the relevant national policy or law’. However, no information is available on the different types of training required by countries – or even within countries.

For example, according to UIS, the percentage of trained primary school teachers is 17% in Madagascar and 90% in Mozambique but it is not clear how this large gap should be interpreted.

Initial teacher education programmes differ in terms of duration, length of induction period and modality – whether they are provided alongside general education or after the completion of subject-based study. In the case of subject teachers, courses also differ with respect to the degree of specialization.

Programmes also differ in their mix of pedagogical knowledge (approaches, methods and techniques of teaching), content knowledge (curriculum, subject matter and use of relevant materials) and professional knowledge.

Countries may apply more or less strict criteria for admission to teacher education programmes. Botswana requires candidates for primary and lower secondary mathematics teacher training to prove proficiency in mathematics before enrolling.

Quality assurance of teacher education programmes also differs between countries. In Thailand, the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment is an external evaluation body with the power to rescind programmes’ accreditation. Chile encourages alternative teacher education provision, which inflates the supply of trainee posts and lowers admission criteria, but the system is not regulated.

Some countries add a layer of quality assurance by not allowing all graduates of teacher education programmes into the profession. In Oman and the Philippines, those with a teaching qualification must also take a test set by external agencies.

Finally, some categories of educators require specialized training which is not covered by this general measure. For example, the qualifications of school principals are not monitored under this indicator.

Not all of these characteristics can be captured in one indicator, clearly. There is one essential recommendation we have for the TCG meeting in two weeks however:  Just as the international community has standardized definitions of what it means to be in primary, secondary or tertiary education, it is necessary to develop a typology of standards for trained teachers [Tweet] if we are to understand progress towards this target.

This is the first in a series of ten blogs on monitoring SDG4, which we hope will serve as a reminder of some of the challenges remaining, and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the two groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Target 4c – What is at stake for monitoring progress on teachers? appeared first on World Education Blog.

This blog launches a series that introduces some of the key challenges for monitoring the new global education goal – SDG 4 – as outlined in the latest GEM Report. The details may seem technical, but this is far from just a technical debate. Rather, it goes to the heart of what we aspire to in education for the next generation. We hope this blog series will raise awareness of the issues at stake and enable more people to take part in the discussions.

There is an important milestone this month on the way to how SDG 4 will be monitored — namely the meeting of the Technical Cooperation Group (TCG) in Madrid on 26-28 October (on thematic indicators for SDG 4).

Discussion of the evolving monitoring architecture should be encouraged. Even though the main parameters for monitoring are in place, most of these indicators have not yet been measured on a global scale and the specific details of how this will happen remain to be decided.

What indicators have been proposed for monitoring SDG4?

The ambition of SDG 4 goes beyond any previous international education agreement. Setting an accompanying monitoring framework has therefore brought up an entirely new set of issues.

Where have we got to so far? There have been two parallel but linked processes to develop indicators for SDG 4.

Global indicators

For each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, progress will be measured through a set of global indicators. At least one global indicator corresponds to each target; for example, there are 11 global indicators for SDG4. These were proposed in March 2016 by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG) which is made up of 27 member states. Countries will be obliged to report back on their progress towards these indicators – and these results will form the backbone of an annual SDG report, whose first edition was released in July.

Although the list of global indicators has essentially been finalized, there remain several methodological aspects to be refined and the mandate of the IAEG has been extended for that reason. Indeed, proposed indicators have been provisionally classified into three tiers depending on the development stage of the methodology and the breadth of the country coverage.

A comparison between education and health shows that the number of Tier 3 indicators, namely those “for which there are no established methodology and standards”, is not only much higher in education but also concerns some of the most critical indicators. An extensive article last week at the Lancet meanwhile shows the advanced level of consensus on monitoring the health goal – and how much education needs to do to catch up.

Thematic indicators

For SDG4 in particular, it is clear that the 11 global indicators are too few to capture the breadth of the new goal. For that reason, the international education community requested additional thematic indicators, which would be optional but would provide a guiding framework for countries. These are currently listed in the annex of the Education 2030 Framework of Action. The Technical Cooperation Group (TCG), a body consisting of the 27 IAEG countries plus a number of agencies and supported by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), is tasked with developing these indicators.

A group working on continuous technical cooperation on comparable education indicators is a considerable advance compared with the Education for All period from 2000-2015. At least two challenges lie ahead, however. First, countries must be assured an opportunity to contribute to discussions in an informed and meaningful way, which we hope this blog might go some way to support. Second, a mechanism is needed to assist with future decision-making within the group. This would also strengthen the group’s legitimacy.

The role of the GEM Report

Against this background, the 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, which has the mandate to monitor and report on education in the SDGs, presents the challenges ahead. It critically analyses each SDG4 target, the concepts, the indicators proposed, as well as those indicators missing. Indeed, a key objective of the monitoring part of the 2016 Report is to serve as a reference document for discussions taking place around the future development of indicators.

If the health sector has a well advanced set of indicators, in education, by contrast, several indicators have not yet been measured globally. These range from education outcomes, such as learning achievement; the lifelong learning perspective, including adult education; disparities in education based on factors, such as wealth; and the content of education aligned with the aims of sustainable development.

And let us not forget that once progress is made on definitions and methodologies, it will be up to national statistical systems to measure progress towards SDG 4 and for education ministries to make effective use of the new information. The 2016 Report offers a set of recommendations that aim to distil key issues for national, regional and global partners.

We hope this series will serve as a reminder of some of the key challenges and as a call to join hands to address them. Join us over the next two weeks by direct tweeting some of our key recommendations from this blog series to members of the groups finalising education indicators on our behalf.

View our growing list of SDG 4 Workshop presentations.

The post Monitoring SDG 4: what is at stake? appeared first on World Education Blog.