Shortening the journey from information to understanding: The new UIS website goes live

By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics

The new UIS website, launched today, offers compelling, innovative ways to find – and use – the best available information on what is happening in education, science, culture and communication worldwide. The new site represents a radical shift in the way we present our data. Rather than sending our visitors to complex databases, the new site zeroes in on the kind of information that people want in the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, packaged in the way that is most useful for them.

The biggest innovation has been to ‘unpack’ the UIS database, breaking down the once separate siloes of hard data, analysis (reports) and the story-telling provided by data visualisations and other tools. Now our web users can see the data in their full context.

National learning assessments: there’s more to gain than valuable data

By Carmela Maria Salzano, International Development Consultant

While the drive to benchmark global progress in improving education outcomes, and to increase the evidence-base for education policy making, has imbued the dialogue around monitoring SDG 4.1 with a strongly technical hue, the GEM Report’s World Education Blog has underscored that “…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.” 

Countries’ national learning assessments show which outcomes are valued, and how they handle equity

National learning assessments, which are a key source of the global data for SDG 4.1, show the extent to which ‘all girls and boys….[are acquiring] relevant and effective learning outcomes’ while revealing important information on the types of knowledge and skills now valued by different education systems. But they can also tell us much about how far governments have integrated their commitments to equity and raising learning standards for all learners across all components of their education systems.

Beyond the traditional markers of expenditures per child, curriculum, pedagogy and teaching practice, the importance of national examinations systems as a key driver of equity is often overlooked. Yet the influence of assessment practice on ensuring equitable outcomes becomes apparent when we consider how many (and what types) of learners are included, or left out, by current methods of testing.

To this extent, the current spotlight on national learning assessments opens up an important window of opportunity to discuss the deeper transformations needed in national examinations systems worldwide. Such discussions may contribute to the development of mechanisms for recording the broader spectrum of skills and higher-order knowledge now recognized as ‘relevant and effective’ outcomes of learning within our new global education goal. At the very least, the global dialogue may help to stress the need for more inclusive assessment policies enabling a greater diversity of learners to have their skills recognized and validated.

School-related gender-based violence must be eliminated

Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and marks the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. The campaign aims to galvanize action to end violence against women and girls and the Global Working Group to End School-Related Gender-Based Violence is using it to highlight the unacceptable violence that too many children and young people experience while trying to get an education.

Shockingly, an estimated 246 million children experience violence in and around school every year. However, education systems are not always innocent when it comes to discussing why this violence takes place. The 2016 GEM Report considers the complex relationship between education and violence showing that while the right sort of education can help prevent violence, the wrong type can incite it or allow it to fester. Violence also often happens in and around school buildings, and school and community leaders must take steps to ensure that schools are free from intimidation and violence.

Addressing this issue head on is crucial. Any violence at, or on the way to and from school, impacts children’s sense of safety and well-being, and can leave deep psychological scars. It is also detrimental to children and young people’s education – it makes them much more likely to fall behind in learning, to skip classes or drop out.

“You’re such a girl”

Frequently the violence that children and young people experience in or around school is related to gender norms and expectations, undermining not only inclusive, quality education but also gender equality. School-related gender-based violence shares the same root causes as the pervasive gender-based violence that remains a barrier to gender equality in all societies. These include systematic inequalities and unequal power dynamics, as well as stereotypes and restrictive attitudes and expectations of how boys and girls should behave. School-related gender-based violence affects all children, though girls are particularly vulnerable. Fear for girls’ safety in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea have led parents to withdraw girls from school completely.

Lifelong learning will help with our much needed shift to greener economies

Did you learn about climate change when you were in school? If you’re not in today’s ‘youth’ bracket, it’s unlikely that you did. If we are to respond to the impact of climate change and other critical environmental challenges today then we need opportunities to continue to learn throughout our lives. Sustainable Development Goal 4 commits to doing this by promoting ‘lifelong learning opportunities for all.’ The learning that takes place throughout our lives, whether at home, at school, or in our communities and workplaces,  shapes our values and attitudes, and influences our behavior. This new poster, released with our new publication, Planet, for the COP22, illustrates what this means in reality.

Quite apart from the many actions we can take at home and in our communities, if our economies don’t change, and don’t start ensuring that prosperity is not at the expense of our environment, we will not cut carbon emissions sufficiently to secure our future.

COP22: Women, climate change and disaster resilience

On Monday during the high-level event on Education Day at COP22 the GEM Report gave a keynote presentation on the important role that education plays in improving environmental knowledge and changing behavior. Yesterday was Gender Day at COP22, showing how important gender equality and women’s human rights are for combating climate change. Our Gender Review of the 2016 GEM Report discusses these points and shows– amongst other things – the need for women to be active partners in building resilience and environmental sustainability.

Research suggests women express more concern than men for the environment and are more supportive of pro-environment policy. For example, countries with higher female parliamentary representation were found to be more likely to ratify international environmental treaties.

Women, girls, boys and men all possess important skills and capacity to prepare for, respond to and recover from crisis; how vital it is that everyone is included in finding solutions to the environmental challenges we face.

What is the ‘whole school approach’ to environmental education?

We have launched a new poster to coincide with the COP 22 taking place this week in Marrakech Morocco showing exactly what is meant by a ‘whole school approach’ to sustainability.

As students spend significant time in the classroom, schools and universities are increasingly called upon to act as role models for sustainable development. The whole school approach to environmental education and learning for sustainability incorporates all aspects of a school: curriculum, extracurricular activities, teacher training, human resources, infrastructure, operations and processes.

This poster, and its key messages, portray major research findings from our PLANET publication released this week, an extraction from the latest 2016 GEM Report, Education for People and Planet.

The COP22 kicks off practical discussions about the role of education within climate change responses

The critical role of education in a global response to climate change was recognized in Article 12 of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco, serves to kick-off its implementation, and is therefore dedicating November 14 to education. On that day, and feeding into the discussions, we will be launching  PLANET: Education for environmental sustainability and green growth at a high-level panel event and press conference. We hope the messages in our latest report can show the practical ways that education can be a critical partner for climate change awareness and resilience.

Our new publication, PLANET, taken from the full 2016 GEM Report, will form the key note presentation during the high-level panel debate at the start of the Education Day entitled “Education – A key driver to scale-up climate action”. This event includes high-level speakers including UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova, HRH Princess Lalla Hasna of Morocco, Manos Antoninis from the GEM Report together with the Minister of Education from Morocco, Mr Rachid Benmokhtar Benabdallah. The event will serve to discuss the way that education can enhance the implementation of the climate agenda and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

The new Planet publication shows how education has a key role to play in addressing environmental challenges, whether their cause is believed to be economic or demographic, or global, national or individual actions. Education can be used to mitigate specific environmental issues and respond to their impact, but also to address the behaviour that causes them.

How to reach a consensus on reporting learning globally

Carrying out national and cross-national learning assessments involves an enormous commitment of time, effort and resources. As such, they are most cost effective when they serve multiple purposes, which might also include providing an input to global monitoring of learning outcomes.

Moreover, if these assessments are meant to track progress over time, rather than serve as a one-off measure of student learning, they require sustainable financing and political commitment, independent of a particular government or minister in power. In many parts of the world, these conditions are difficult to obtain and solutions on the ground are inevitably imperfect.

Thus the development of global measures of learning is not simply a technical issue, but also a political one. In some countries opposition to learning assessments has become apparent among different groups, including parents, teacher associations and political parties.

To address these concerns the GEM Report recommends that governments embrace open and inclusive approaches that prioritize the needs and capacities of their countries based on the criteria of inclusivity, efficiency and feasibility. And they should make concerted efforts to build consensus around the content, quality and process of assessment activities.

Comparing learning across diverse systems: a global challenge

Until recently education systems focused almost entirely on measuring access to and completion of school instead of what students take away from their schooling experience. Since 2000 there has been a pronounced shift to measuring learning outcomes, with more and more countries assessing student learning in national, regional and international assessments.

The desirability and feasibility of developing comparable measures of learning outcomes has thus become a global issue, vigorously debated among policy analysts, donors and researchers. The challenges of using a global metric to improve learning are also the theme of a two day symposium this week, sponsored by the (US based) Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) entitled: The Possibility and Desirability of Global Learning Metrics: Comparative Perspectives on Education Research, Policy and Practice, at which the GEM Report will be present.

This blog series will discuss questions about global monitoring of learning outcomes, how they can be measured and whether and how information from assessments is used to enable learning.

Youth civic education is crucial to a country’s democratic health

by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems

A culture of democracy flourishes only when citizens are informed about democratic principles, and translate that knowledge into action by engaging with institutions and other public structures, community service, and leadership. As such, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) confirms the belief outlined in the 2016 GEM Report that youth civic education is crucial to a country’s democratic health, and ultimately, peace.

IFES is an international non-profit organization that advances good governance, and empowers underrepresented populations to participate in political processes in their communities. The organization views youth civic education as vital as “youth” is a transitional period during which individuals’ relationships with government change from passive to active. Reaching the age of enfranchisement is a milestone that enables young people to formally participate in their country’s political process.