Farewell, thank you and hopes for the future from the EFA GMR Director

The scale of the global learning crisis, the need to support teachers to address this, and the importance of putting equality at the heart of post-2015 education goals – vital messages from the 2013/4 Education for All Monitoring Report – have been picked up around the world since the report’s launch last week. In her last blog post as director, Pauline Rose underlines the key part the report plays in global education efforts – and the need for its independent monitoring to continue.

I can’t quite believe it – but this is my last day with the Education for All Global Monitoring Report. I have been honoured both to be part of such a great team, as well as working with colleagues in UNESCO and around the world who have such a strong commitment to making Education for All a reality.

When I began as Director two and a half years ago, I set out a vision for the Report, with the aim of harnessing the power of education. Looking back at this statement now, I am reassured to see that our collective efforts have helped to fulfil the three priorities I identified.

Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia, H.E. Demeke Mekonnen and Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, Getachew Engida
Credit: UNESCO/MulugetaAyene

The launch last week of the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report is a clear signal of the power of our collective efforts. It has been a huge success, and our messages have struck home in many countries. Policy-makers have openly acknowledged the need to take on board our recommendations. The global response has also been a tremendous confirmation of the report’s indispensable role.

Our global launch took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the African Union summit. The country is identified in the Report as making great progress thanks to the government’s commitment to education. In recognition of this, as he opened the launch of the Report, the Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen, announced that Ethiopia has become a “Champion Country” for the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative. The headline from the Report hit the front pages in Ethiopia as African heads of state arrived in Ethiopia’s capital.

Let’s make sure our education pledges reach every corner of the world

What does equity in education mean? How is it related to equality? And how can we work towards both? As delegates from around the world focus this week on the place of equity in post-2015 development goals, we look at why it is vital to put equity at the centre.

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

Everyone deserves an equal opportunity of getting an education: it’s a basic human right. But giving everyone an equal chance means more than making an equal effort. To make sure some children have an equal chance – especially the poor, girls, ethnic minorities, the disabled, those who live on the margins – you have to make a special effort.

That’s what equity means, as opposed to equality: equity is about fairness, it’s what you have to do to get to equality.

When international education experts drew up the six Education for All goals in 2000, they wrote the language of equity into the goals. So why is equity in education far from being realised, with only two years to go until the deadline for the goals in 2015?

It’s crucial that we resolve this question, because the international education community is now proposing new goals, for the post-2015 period. And once again equity is there in black and white. It’s on the agenda this week in New York, where representatives from around the world have gathered for a meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. The meeting focuses today on “Promoting equality, including social equity, gender equality and women’s empowerment.”

What can we do to make sure that this time, good intentions translate into real results for the world’s marginalized children?

The global learning crisis is costing $129 billion a year

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

Worldwide, millions of children are failing to learn the basics. Children who already face disadvantage – girls, the poor, the disabled those in rural areas, are being hit the hardest.

We reveal the scale of this global learning crisis in the 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which we launched last week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Report, Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all, shows that the learning crisis is costing governments $129 billion a year: 10 per cent of global spending on primary education is being lost on poor quality education that fails to ensure that children learn.

In many sub-Saharan African countries, for example, only one in five of the poorest children reach the end of primary school having learnt the basics in reading and mathematics.

In a third of countries analysed by the Report, less than three-quarters of existing primary school teachers are trained to national standards. In West Africa, where few children are learning the basics, teachers on temporary contracts with low pay and little formal training make up more than half of the teaching force.

The learning crisis will affect generations of children unless governments take urgent action to boost teaching through reforms that focus on meeting the needs of the disadvantaged. This means attracting the best candidates into teaching; giving them relevant training; deploying them within countries to areas where they are needed most; and offering them incentives to make a long-term commitment to teaching.

Teaching and Learning: Achieving quality for all

Photo credit: UNESCO/Amima Sayeed

The 11^th Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Teaching and Learning: Achieving quality for all, reveals that 40% of children are not learning the basics in reading and mathematics, over half of whom have spent four years in school. This global learning crisis is costing governments $129 billion a year. This is the equivalent of ten per cent of global spending on primary education being lost on poor quality education that is failing to ensure that children learn. By contrast, the Report shows that ensuring an equal, quality education for all can generate huge economic rewards, increasing a country’s gross domestic product per capita by 23 per cent over 40 years.
At this primary school in Sindh, Pakistan, children have no school to go to because their school-building collapsed years ago. They now go to classes under a tree. Learning in such conditions is very difficult.

Have we kept our 2013 education promises? Top 10 blogs say yes!

My blog at the beginning of 2013 set out three areas in which we hoped the education community would make progress towards post-2015 goals this year: devising an overarching education goal as part of a broader post-2015 framework; identifying approaches for measuring equity in educational access and learning; and setting targets for financing education. Our top 10 blogs of the year show that these areas have been a key part of the EFA Global Monitoring Report’s activities, and also areas that have been high on the agenda for the education community.

1.     Devise an overarching education goal as part of a broader post-2015 framework

One of the accomplishments of the EFA Global Monitoring Report this year was the launch of our new booklet with infographics, accompanied by an interactive website, to show how education transforms lives. Its launch, immediately before the UN General Assembly, intended to make sure that world leaders put education at the centre of the post-2015 goals that were being discussed, with an overarching education goal making it into the broader development framework. Mariam Khalique, the teacher of Pakistani school girl Malala Yousafzai shot by the Taliban, gave an impassioned speech to school children in New York demonstrating how education gives girls’ dignity. Her speech, published as a blog, was overwhelmingly the top blog of the year – and was so successful that it has even made it into the EFA Global Monitoring Report’s top 5 blogs of all time. Our blog showing how we will never eradicate poverty without quality education for all, drawing on the Education Transforms booklet, also made it into the top 10 blogs.

With debates heating up throughout the year about the shape of a global education framework after 2015, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team put forward a proposal to show why there should be a separate set of measurable global education goals and targets, complementing an overarching development agenda. This is linked with our most recent blog which contains a poll so you can vote for your choice. The overwhelming response to the poll so far is in favour of a global education goal within a broader post-MDG global development framework combined with a specific global education framework, with 71% voting for this option.

Place your vote: do we need a new global education framework after 2015?

How can a renewed vision for education after 2015 and an overall global development framework complement each other? Do we need a global education framework to replace Education for All? Continuing confusion over these key questions was apparent when representatives from Western Europe and North America met in Paris last week for a regional consultation meeting on education after 2015, co-hosted by UNESCO and UNICEF.

With time ticking past, it is vital to be clear whether a global education framework will be developed, and what it might look like. Participants at last week’s meeting highlighted the need for a universal framework of relevance to all countries, regardless of their stage of development. They emphasized the need to improve the quality of education, make sure that all children are learning, regardless of their circumstances, and to end the skills deficits that many countries face.

One question that arises is whether a new education framework should continue to be called Education for All (EFA), or whether this would this risk fatigue and confusion over why a new deadline is being set for a similar set of goals. One possible name is an acronym of the elements the global education goal currently being debated. The acronym would ground the goals and subsequent framework in the key principle of equity – making sure that every child and young person has an equal chance of education:

Donors must renew their commitment to supporting education goals after 2015

Aid has played a key role in supporting the Education for All goals. But now that support is in danger of being undermined as donors distribute aid through non-government channels, fail to coordinate their efforts sufficiently, or turn away from education altogether. As education partners gather to debate the post-2015 agenda, new analysis of aid trends by the EFA Global Monitoring Report team underlines the need for a post-2015 financing goal – and a fresh commitment to education aid.

Since the EFA goals were established, aid from donors belonging to the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee Aid (DAC) has been indispensable in boosting progress towards the goals. Nevertheless, they have failed to keep the promise they made in 2000 that no country would be prevented from achieving Education for All by a lack of resources. This failure, which is one reason the goals have largely not been met, is now being compounded by changes in aid priorities that threaten education progress.

As representatives from Western Europe and North America meet in Paris on December 5-6 for a regional consultation meeting on education after 2015, co-hosted by UNESCO and UNICEF, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team is releasing a paper on aid trends. Our analysis shows that a post-2015 goal on education financing is crucial to make sure donors not only stick to their promises in future, but also renew their commitments to providing aid in a coordinated way that supports recipient governments.

Although aid to education has risen over the past decade, there are signs of reversal since 2010. Low income countries, which account for 37% of out-of-school children, have been hardest hit, facing a reduction of 9%. This is a worrying trend: while domestic funding is the most important source of funding for basic education, aid plays a particularly vital role in the poorest countries.

It is not just the amount spent by donors that matters, but also how these resources are allocated. The EFA movement, through the Dakar Framework for Action, encourages country-led education planning: for aid to be effective, donors need to channel their funds via government systems wherever possible. Unfortunately, our analysis shows that DAC member countries reduced the share of aid they channelled via the public sector from 42% in 2008 and to 36% in 2011.

PISA results show the power of better education policies

The latest findings of the triennial Programme for International Student Assessment are released today. Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD programme, looks at some of the recipes for success in countries that have performed well.

International comparisons are never easy and they aren’t perfect. But PISA, whose 2012 findings are released today, shows what is possible in education. The survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), helps countries see themselves in the mirror of the results and opportunities delivered by the world’s education leaders.

Even those who claim that the standing of countries in PISA mainly reflects social and cultural factors must now concede that it is possible to improve education. In mathematics, Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia and Turkey rose from the bottom; Italy, Portugal and the Russian Federation have advanced to the OECD average or close to it; Germany and Poland rose from average to good, and Shanghai (China) and Singapore have moved from good to great.

In 40 of the 65 participating countries, results improved in at least one subject area. This is a major tribute to educational efforts all around the world. These countries did not change their culture, or the composition of their populations, nor did they fire their teachers. They changed their education policies and practices – including the way they support teachers, the focus of the forthcoming 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report.

Education plays a crucial role in fight against HIV and AIDS

Many adolescents living with AIDS do not receive adequate support and care – and many others are not aware of how to protect themselves from AIDS. To mark World AIDS Day, we look at how education – especially of girls – helps save lives by improving knowledge of HIV/AIDS  among young people.

On December 1, World AIDS Day, it’s important to acknowledge how much progress has been made in prevention, treatment and care. The number of new HIV infections has fallen by a third since 2001, and by half among children. The number of AIDS-related deaths has dropped by 30% since 2005. In low and middle income countries, 10 million people are receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment; the United Nations is set to exceed its goal of ensuring that 15 million people receive treatment by 2015.

There are still 34 million people living with HIV, however, and many countries still have high prevalence rates. As the World Health Organization is underlining on World AIDS Day this year, children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable: 3.3 million children are affected, and young people account for 41% of all new HIV infections among adults. Education is a crucial part of efforts to prevent AIDS among young people, and improve care for those living with HIV and AIDS, as the UN General Assembly and the Dakar Framework for Action have acknowledged.

How does education help? Adolescents who know more about HIV/AIDS are more likely to get tested. Education also reduces the discrimination against HIV-positive children and adolescents that can lead them to drop out of school. In Latin America, people with secondary education are 45% more tolerant towards HIV-positive people than those with only primary education.

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Holding business to account for learning outcomes – what are the risks?

With quality of education becoming recognized as a vital component of post-2015 development goals, measuring how much children are learning is high on the global agenda. The Learning Metrics Task Force recently brought together education experts to discuss how to improve learning through measurement and assessment. Soon after, a World Bank symposium featured wide-ranging and informative debates on what international, regional and national assessments of learning can tell us.

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At the same time, Pearson – which refers to itself as “the world’s leading learning company” which operates “in virtually every sphere of the education landscape, from schools to higher and professional education; from publishing textbooks to operating entire institutions” – has announced that it is setting itself targets not only for revenue and profits but also for making sure that children using its products are learning. Referring to the EFA Global Monitoring Report’s estimate that a quarter of a billion children are not learning the basics, the company describes its approach as a “bold and brave aspiration”.

Pearson anticipates that by 2018 it will be carrying out rigorous and externally audited reporting on progress in improving learning outcomes. The company intends to determine what learner outcomes its products are designed to deliver and under what circumstances; how many learners are intended to benefit and to what extent; and how progress towards these goals is to be measured.