Major efforts are needed to make high-quality adult learning and education a reality worldwide

By Werner Mauch, Team Leader Monitoring and Assessment of Lifelong Learning, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning

Every three years, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning publishes the Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) to monitor the extent to which UNESCO Member States are putting their international commitments into practice. Last week’s new Report, the GRALE 4, includes input from 159 countries – an exceptionally high number in compared to previous years –  and therefore draws a very comprehensive picture of the state of adult learning and education worldwide.

What are our main conclusions? In short, we urgently need to take action to make adult learning and education (ALE) a reality for all. The report calls for a major change in approach to ALE. It requires adequate investment to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to access and benefit from ALE and that its full contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is realized. The publication stresses the need to increase national investment in ALE, reduce participation costs, raise awareness of benefits, and improve data collection and monitoring.

Not yet reaching the disadvantaged

The GRALE 4 data show that in almost one-third of countries, fewer than 5 per cent of adults aged 15 and above participate in education and learning programmes.

A closer look at the data makes clear that adults with disabilities, older adults, refugees and migrants, minority groups and other disadvantaged segments of society are particularly under-represented in adult education programmes and find themselves deprived of crucial access to lifelong learning opportunities. And this is despite the fact that support to disadvantaged and marginalized groups represents the investment with the highest return potential.

Consultation and call for contributions for the 2021 GEM Report on non-state actors in education

Few topics in education generate as much passion as the role of non-state actors. While everyone wants to achieve the goal of providing quality education for all, who delivers it, who is engaged, and how they are engaged is a subject of much debate. Non-state activity in education has a variety of motivations, from charity to profit. Activities may or may not involve collaboration with the government. Controversy abounds as to whether the role of non-state actors should be encouraged or contained. Public opinion on non-state actors displays generational shifts that vary between countries.

Today we are releasing the concept note for the 2021 Global Education Monitoring Report on non-state actors in education, which will tackle this topic head on – to monitor the situation, inform and advance research, and provide policy recommendations. We are also opening an online consultation on this concept note as well as a call for expressions of interest to contribute to the Report, the aim of which is to broaden the scope of expertise and voices that inform our work.

Report approach

While states have a duty to fulfil their citizens’ rights to education as enshrined in international or national law, a wide range of non-state actors, in different forms and through different arrangements, play a significant role in education systems. As detailed in the concept note, the 2021 GEM Report’s main objective is to broaden the conversation on that role. Looking across all levels of education from early childhood care and education through to adult education, it will deal thematically with (1) how non-state actors are involved in providing education services; (2) how non-state engagement is financed; (3) how non-state actors are regulated; and (4) the role of non-state actors in generating evidence and in innovation.

Bringing the international education community together

By Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO

As 2019 draws to a close and prompted by my colleague Julia Gillard’s recent blog, I would like to share my reflections on how to strengthen our collective action for accelerating progress towards SDG4.

Exactly a year ago, at the Global Education Meeting that UNESCO organized in Brussels following a series of regional consultations, we took stock of SDG4 progress. While countries have been making progress in adjusting their policies, our projections have shown that we are off track in terms of our quantitative targets.

On the sidelines, UNESCO organized a first informal meeting on the global education architecture with all key partners – among others UN agencies, the World Bank, and the Global Partnership for Education. We put on the table the urgent need to address the fragmentation of the sector. We all agreed that to accelerate national progress, we need to better align priorities, eliminate duplication of efforts and work towards reducing unhelpful competition for funding, often from the same set of donors.

Since then, I feel that we have moved the needle in the right direction. While progress remains to be made, the discourse today is more about strengthened collaboration around a set of common priorities. How did we get here?

What we do in Heraklion to accomplish integration through education

By Nikolaos Angelakis, Deputy Mayor for Education, Longlife Learning and Youth Issues

Image: Christine & Hagen Graf

Heraklion, our city, aims to become a learning, smart, cohesive city – a meeting place of “5+1 cultures”.  That’s why we have created “The Local Strategic Plan for Lifelong Learning 2017-2020: Heraklion – a Learning City”. We intend to build a sustainable city with quality, effective structures of social support and extended networks of solidarity, along with a powerful cultural and touristic identity, a strong contribution to the local economy and entrepreneurship. We want to invest in people and society, providing opportunities and flexible forms of learning. We aim to accomplish integration for all through education as the new GEM Report policy paper on cities and refugees describes.

Throughout its history, our city has been depicted as a host as a hospitable one for people who, for various reasons, have departed from their homeland, seeking a new life. Supporting all vulnerable social groups is a continuing priority. Many structures, programs and acts are solely dedicated to that. To acknowledge the progress in and commitment to promoting education and lifelong learning the city has been awarded this year the Learning Cities Award during the 4^th UNESCO-UIL conference on Learning Cities

Internal Migration and Education in Egypt: Migrating to Opportunity?

This blog is written by Caroline Krafft, Adriana Cortes Mendosa, and Skylah Thao, equal co-authors of a background paper for the new Arab States 2019 GEM Report.

Internal migration, i.e. people moving within a country’s borders, can, potentially, either improve or hinder educational opportunities. In Egypt, internal migration opens doors to better education.

Not only has urbanization been slower in the Arab States than in the rest of the world for the past 30 years, but rates of internal migration in Egypt are particularly low (Figure 1). Out of 61 countries, Egypt had the second-to-lowest rate of internal migration. In 2012, only 21% of adults lived in a different village or neighborhood than where they were born.

Figure 1

The children of migrants tend to have better education opportunities than children of those who remained in rural areas: they stay in school longer and are more likely to complete secondary or higher education. A better economic situation of their migrant parents plays an important role in their survival at school.

10 students with a disability talk about the difficulties of accessing inclusive education in the USA

Photo: Binh Duong/UNESCO

“Being disabled, for many of us, means the end to any hopes of pursuing an education”, said Ashley Cowan D’Ambrosio, a Master of Arts student at the City University of New York with multiple disabilities, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). “The system is thoroughly broken,” she said, “such that our dropout rates are some of the highest of any marginalized community, and our educational attainment rates are similarly problematic”. On this International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we describe the reality of ten American college students, who like Ashley, face multiple layers of barriers to access a quality, inclusive education.

Knowledge matters: understanding disabilities, and being aware of rights

The first barrier they describe arises from a lack of knowledge or empathy about disabilities among the teaching staff at college – something the 2020 GEM Report on inclusion and education will cover in depth. According to Ashley “The major issue I see […] is that our legal frameworks are built around the medical model of disability, which views disability as deficit and places an undue burden on the individual. […] It’s not just that we are having trouble ensuring our rights are met legally, it’s that we have to move beyond legal compliance to ensure inclusion.”

Ariana, a third-year student now in law school with a gastro vascular disorder remembers that, on missing class during her undergraduate studies, she “almost always was faced with disparaging remarks from professors and TAs regarding [her] not really being disabled or an attendance accommodation being inappropriate”. She adds that in college, she was told quite often that “she didn’t LOOK disabled, […] as if that were some sort of compliment.”

Mary, a visually impaired student, reports similar barriers: “I tried to obtain my math requirements, but this was hard because of the wide-held belief that blind people can’t do math because it is visual.” This sense of disempowerment has direct impacts on educational outcomes: “My grades became a direct reflection of course accessibility, oscillating from academic probation to the Dean’s List”, added Ashley.

Pregnant girls must be supported in attending school

In October, Sierra Leone’s government issued a clarification to its 2015 policy that barred pregnant girls from attending school. Sadly, the clarification only reaffirms the government’s position. Based on erroneous perceptions that ‘pregnant girls have the potential to negatively influence their peers to be sexually active and become pregnant’, pregnant girls are excluded from normal schooling, although they are allowed to sit exams.

#SierraLeone states pregnant girls can now sit exams but still cannot attend school. How will pregnant girls pass exams without school preparation? The ban must be fully & clearly lifted in line with human rights obligations. pic.twitter.com/dXWAzCxZyM

— Sabrina Mahtani (@Sabrina_Mahtani) October 15, 2019

If we are to achieve SDG 4, it requires that all girls, including young mothers, are able to continue, return, and complete their education.

Early pregnancy hinders education

Globally, nearly 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year, and 2 million of them are under 15. These girls have a right to education, just like their peers – but that right is not always upheld. The 2019 Gender Report found that girls often drop out of school in the wake of pregnancy. In Chile, for example, being a mother reduces the likelihood of completing secondary education by between 24% and 37%. Longitudinal data from Madagascar also confirm that teenage pregnancy leads to early school leaving.

Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest rates of teenage pregnancy, with 28% of girls aged 15 to 19 pregnant at least once in 2013. In a country with a population of 7.5 million, thousands of girls have been affected by the schooling ban, which has contributed to the disparity between girls and boys at higher levels of education: the lower secondary completion rate is 29% for girls compared to 46% for boys.

Benefits and challenges of refugee inclusion: Lessons from Lebanon

By Elizabeth Adelman, Vidur Chopra, and Sarah Dryden-Peterson, equal co-authors of a background paper for the Arab States 2019 GEM Report on double-shift schools in Lebanon

At 1.30 pm on a balmy October afternoon in Beirut, 12-year old Nour and her friends are congregating outside their school, patiently waiting to be allowed inside. The gates are shut, indicating the school is not yet ready for the second shift, which enrolls only Syrian refugee students like Nour. On the other side of the gate, Lebanese students wait excitedly for the school day to end. As the bell goes off, the Lebanese students rush out while the Syrian students lean against the school boundary walls, waiting for the last Lebanese student to leave. Nour and her Lebanese peers see each other, exchanging glances, but no words.

In 2013, Lebanon’s public schools began running a second-shift system, enabling Nour and other Syrian learners in Lebanon to access Lebanese public education. This move mirrors global shifts in refugee education policy, including UNHCR’s 2012 and 2019 education strategies and the Global Compact on Refugees, that call for greater inclusion of refugees within national education systems. Currently around 156,000 Syrian refugee students are enrolled in Lebanese public schools. What can refugee hosting countries learn from Lebanon’s experience of including Syrians within its public schools?

Our research for the Arab States 2019 GEM Report draws on interviews with teachers, students, parents and policymakers in Lebanon conducted between 2015-2019 and provides a nuanced understanding of Lebanon’s second-shift system. In 2012 as the Syrian refugee influx began, the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) opened public schools to Syrian students. However, as the refugee crisis in Lebanon expanded, public schools were unable to accommodate the growing student population. In response, MEHE established a second shift system, open only to Syrian learners, covering formal basic education (Grades KG – 9). Teachers already working in the system in the first shift  and newly hired contractual teachers were assigned to teach in the second shift and were paid on an hourly basis.

Cities need to pull their weight in using education to help migrants and refugees feel included

Today the GEM Report released its 40th policy paper ahead of the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum next month to mark the one-year anniversary of the Global Compact on Refugees. The paper highlights the increasingly important role of cities using education as a lever for the inclusion of people on the move. It calls for international and non-governmental organisations to recognise cities as partners and for governments to clarify and support cities’ role in education.

People on the move tend to concentrate in urban areas, whether arriving from rural areas or across borders. Many living in cities are foreign born, for instance, – from 46% in Toronto to 62% in Brussels, 83% in Dubai and 39% in Sydney. Those forcibly displaced also often end up in cities: around 60% of the world’s refugees live in urban areas.

Currently, many migrants in poorer countries end up in slums with limited access to a free education. In richer countries they are often segregated into schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In France, for example, immigrants in 2007 were more likely to be in classes where 15% of their peers were also immigrants. In Germany’s Hessen state, about 41% of children who did not speak German at home went to day-care centres where at least half the other children did not speak German either. In Turkey, housing market analysis indicated that natives moved out of neighbourhoods where Syrian refugees had settled.

Leveraging technology to tackle the migrant education crisis in the Arab States

By Nafez Dakkak, Executive Chairman of Edraak at the Queen Rania Foundation

Samia was 10 when she left her home for the first time and became a refugee. She was just about to enter 5^th grade. Forcefully displaced from her home country, she was unable to pursue her right to an education. Moving from one location to the next, caregivers and teachers at makeshift schools were unable to provide her with the needed resources and support to continue learning. More than 5 years later, Samia is 15 years old and yet to be provided with regular access to formal education. Samia is just one of millions of refugee children around the world.

Today, no part of the world is affected by migration and displacement more than the Arab States. Globally, out of every three displaced people, globally one is from the region. As the Arab States 2019 GEM Report released last week shows, this stark reality has had a tangible impact on the performance of regional education systems – especially when it comes to basic indicators such as enrollment.

Over the past thirty years, states across the region invested heavily in providing access to primary and secondary education (admittedly sometimes at the risk of quality provision). But many of the gains in enrollment have now been reversed – partly due to the refugee crisis. Unless regional and state actors come together with dedicated and innovative efforts the region risks losing out on all its previous investments in education – and most importantly resulting in a “lost generation”.