A national perspective on the Swiss education system

On June 19, Switzerland published the Swiss Education Report 2018. Fully in line with the GEM Report’s #MakeitPublic, campaign to ensure that all countries report back to their citizens on their progress in education, the new Report provides new analysis on the entire Swiss education system from primary school to adult education.

The report answers five hundred questions related to education in Switzerland, and examines differences in class size within cantons, stable and differentiated completion rates in upper-secondary education and the transitions between compulsory schooling and further education.

Published in four languages, the 2018 Report takes a deep dive into key trends in the field of higher education, such as high dropout rates at university level, and provides ongoing assessment of existing measures to ensure the highest standards in education. In the blog below representatives from Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) share their observations on the process of authoring the national education monitoring report and how this have been useful for identifying challenges and successes in education.

If education cannot wait, then humanitarian aid needs to increase

The Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2018 (GHA 2018) was released last week along with UNHCR’s Global Trends Report. Just as there are more people displaced than ever before, levels of humanitarian assistance are also at an all-time high.

The GHA 2018 report shows that humanitarian aid has been growing now for four years, albeit by only 3% from 2016 to 2017. Not only is humanitarian assistance growing in absolute terms; it is also growing as a percentage of overall aid budgets as a result of the growing impact of conflict and natural disasters.

The GHA 2018 report also tells us that over 200 million people needed international humanitarian assistance in 2017, a fifth of whom were in just three countries – Syria, Turkey and Yemen. The fact that Syria has been in the first place for five years is a reminder that crises are mostly protracted. No fewer than 17 of the 20 largest recipients of international humanitarian assistance in 2017 were either medium- or long-term recipients.

OECD countries prioritize education to improve inclusion of migrants and refugees

There’s a deluge of reports on migrants and refugees just out. The 2018 International Migration Outlook, OECD’s report on migration flows and policies was released last week. Reflecting the tone of the latest UNHCR report on the rise of the number of those forcibly displaced, the OECD Report shows that, last year, one in ten people living in OECD countries were foreign-born and around 5 million new permanent migrants arrived. In addition, levels of temporary foreign workers and international student numbers have reached record levels.

The Outlook concentrates on labour market integration, which is linked indisputably to education, such as the extent to which migrants speak the language of their host country or the qualifications and skills they arrive with are recognised. While it may be inadequate to paint a picture of inclusion simply by the extent to which a new arrival can access the labour market, the emphasis on ensuring that they do not experience frustration by having their skills wasted is an important one.

Language skills seen as crucial for integration

Across OECD countries, many countries focus on language skills to help newly arrived migrants and refugees integrate in their societies.  Adding to some of the country initiatives mentioned in the new report from the European Migration Network, the OECD report mentions others, such as Denmark, which sees language skills as so important that they are providing incentives for migrants and refugees to acquire them. Others, such as Austria, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Poland are, instead, making language tests a compulsory element for certain permit decisions.

What education policies did European countries prioritize for migration in 2017?

Migration continues to be very high on the political agenda of high income countries. Europe is home to 30% of the total population of migrants. The Annual Report on Migration and Asylum 2017, a monitoring tool that reviews policy developments in 24 out of 28 European Union countries plus Norway, which was published last month by the European Migration Network, takes readers through a familiar menu of asylum procedures, border controls, family reunification rules and visa regimes.

But the report also devotes good space to education, in the context of ‘integration’ of migrants and refugees, which suggests that EU Member States increasingly realize that what happens in classrooms is key for their diverse societies, a message that the 2019 GEM Report on migration and displacement, due out on November 20^th, will emphasize.

European countries see education as important for ‘integrating’ migrants

Measures to improve the education attainment of migrants and refugees have included making school or vocational training compulsory for all those younger than 18 years old in Austria, except for those with temporary residence; or legislating measures welcoming newly arrived immigrant pupils into schools in Belgium; and disseminating information about the national education system in the Czech Republic.

We need more than money to help the millions of displaced children around the world

The new UNHCR annual Global Trends figures show that there is now an unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world who have been displaced. Among them are 25.4 million refugees. These young people have extreme education needs, and expectations, which host countries must meet with the support of the international community. This is the focus of the Global Compact on Refugees process, which is expected to be completed this year. We will be laying out some concrete policy recommendations on where and how resources should be allocated in our next Report due out on the 20 November this year.

The sheer size of these new figures is equivalent to 31 new people being displaced every minute – or more people than those who live in the UK.

Are you the voice of refugees on education?

On this World Refugee Day, the GEM Report is launching a call for refugee students and their teachers to share their stories and photos about education. Our next report will be launched on November 20, will focus on the theme of migration, displacement and education. The GEM Report team is therefore interested in featuring your stories to emphasize their relevance but also their urgency . We also hope to contact some of you with a view to inviting you to speak on a global stage at our launch events and/or sharing your story on this blog or the press.

Having carried out research from around the world on refugee education for the last year, we know that there is no end to the amount of uplifting but also devastating stories that you all own. We are keen to hear from you, whether you are students or teachers.

Below are some areas we expect many of you to have personal experiences of, which can help guide your writing.

Did you know? There are just as many boys out of school as girls

This Sunday is International Father’s Day. What better time than this to shine the education spotlight on boys. Because, I’ll bet many of you do not know that there are just as many boys out of school as girls. While girls are less likely to enter school in the first place in many countries, a GEM Report paper, Don’t forget the boys, shows that boys are at a higher risk globally of not progressing and completing their education. They also perform less well in reading assessments worldwide. We won’t achieve gender equality in education if we ignore one half of the story.

Developing world leaders agree education is their top priority

New research just released by AidData funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development; and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation contains the findings of a survey among 3,500 leaders working in 126 low and lower middle income countries around the world on their greatest development challenges in their country.

Regardless of region, they agreed their top three priorities were education, peace and justice, and decent work and economic growth. Overall, the education goal in the SDG agenda, SDG 4, was the most oft-cited as being in the leaders’ top priorities.

Countries need to prepare teachers better to teach about our impact on the environment

It’s World Environment Day. Another opportunity for global campaigners to rally around the need for stronger commitment to stop the human impact on the planet before it is too late. Another day for policy makers to be challenged as to why some barriers to progress are so hard to tear down. Why are governments dragging their heels in training teachers to teach about sustainable development, for instance?

The 2017/8 GEM Report highlighted the strikingly low percentage of countries that were covering education for sustainable development in teacher education in 2012. Teachers are clearly being left poorly prepared to teach a way forward for addressing the acute environmental issues, including climate change, to the waves of students passing through schools.

Helen Clark speaks of education’s ‘intrinsic and enabling value’

The third GEM Report Advisory Board meeting took place last week. The GEM Report was honoured to welcome Helen Clark as new Chair of the Advisory Board. Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Ms Clark was Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017. She brings her excellent knowledge of international development challenges and actors to the team and will help guide the GEM Report’s work to advocate for education’s central role in the sustainable development agenda.

Ms Clark spoke of her reasoning in choosing to take up the position as Chair of the GEM Report’s Advisory Board. “Education is a key Sustainable Development Goal because it’s so important in its own right but also because, if we achieve the education targets, it will enable progress across a whole lot of the other goals as well. So it is important both for its intrinsic and its enabling value and so has to be regarded as extremely significant for the 2030 agenda.”