This means that all children should have a high quality primary and secondary education that equips them for employment and an enjoyable life. Governments and the private sector should work together to provide opportunities for lifelong learning and skills development for adults.
Education is a fundamental right. It is one of the most basic ways people can achieve wellbeing. It lifts lifetime earnings as well as how much a person can engage with and contribute to society. Quality education positively effects health, and lowers family size and fertility rates. Availability of workers with the right skills is one of the key determinants of success for any business—and of capable and professional public bureaucracies and services. Investing in education brings individuals and societies enormous benefits, socially, environmentally and economically. But to realize these benefits, children and adolescents must have access to education and learn from it.
All countries grapple with issues of equity and quality in their education systems, which might serve as part of the explanation why education is consistently ranked in the top of the “my world” priorities, regardless of the respondent’s stated country of origin.
There is wide consensus that the post-2015 education agenda should include a single harmonized global education framework recognizing education as a fundamental human right and a public good that should be made available to all.
- 1. EQUALITY AND ACCESS FOR ALL
All around the world, we are nearing universal primary school enrollment, although 28 million children in countries emerging from conflict are still not in school. In more than 20countries, at least one in five children has never even been to school. There, the unfinished business of MDG 2, universal primary education, continues to be a priority. We need to ensure all children, regardless of circumstance, are able to enroll and complete a full course of primary and lower secondary education and, in most cases, meet minimum learning standards.
Moreover, educational disparities persist among and within countries. In many countries where average enrollment rates have risen, the gaps between, for example, rural girls from a minority community and urban boys from the majority group are vast. Exclusion from education – including being left out of consideration in education related development planning, policies and budgeting – occurs most often among girls, rural and indigenous peoples, working children, children living in conflict, orphans, migrants and nomads, children with disabilities, persons living with HIV/ Aids, persons living in conflict and disaster contexts, refugees and internally displaced persons, and linguistic and cultural minorities.
How should the new development framework address these types of exclusions?
Should there be a greater focus on equity?
In order to reach many of the excluded groups listed above, it has been suggested that we will need to strengthen enabling learning environments. This means ensuring safe and healthy learning environments, including safe, disaster-sensitive school buildings and classrooms, safe and clean drinking water, school feeding programs, gender-sensitive sanitation and hygiene, and the integration in the curriculum of comprehensive health education as well as indigenous knowledge and knowledge relevant to the lives of rural.
How should the new development framework address these needs to make education more accessible and effective for all?
Some 60 million primary school-age children and 71 million adolescents do not attend school. Even in countries where overall enrollment is high, significant numbers of students leave school early. On average, 14 percent of young people in the European Union reach no further than lower secondary education.
Primary education is clearly a fundamental building block, but does more attention need to be given to the transition to the secondary and tertiary levels?
- 2. QUESTIONS OF QUALITY
The issues of the quality of education, of learning outcomes and of skills development have been identified as key concerns. Efforts over the last decade have focused more on access and completion of schooling rather than on what children actually learn in school. The quality of education got no mention in the original MDGs but was highlighted in the High Level Panel report and gets coverage alongside health care quality:
“The poor suffer not only from lack of access to basic services but also very often form the poor quality of the services provided. This applies with particular force to education and health care… the post 2015 development agenda must achieve the MDG goal of primary education for all. However it should also aim to address quality as reflected in learning outcomes, which will need to be more widely and effectively measured.”
School enrollment does not tell the full story. A focus is also needed on what children and young people learn and whether it equips them functionally for life and work.Globally, there is an education, learning and skills crisis. Among the world’s 650 million children of primary school age, 130 million are not learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. A recent study of 28 countries found that more than one out of every three students (23 million primary school children) could not read or do basic math after multiple years of schooling.
Should the Post 2015 agenda have a greater focus on the quality of education, including its content and relevance, as well as on learning outcomes? If so, how can we this?
In their report the High Level Panel stated, “We believe it important to target learning outcomes, to make sure every child performs up to a global minimum standard upon completing primary education. To do this, many countries have found that pre-primary education, getting children ready to learn, is also needed…”
What do you think? Should pre-primary education be included?
There is wide support for a single post-2015 UN development framework containing a single set of goals – goals that are universally applicable to all countries but adaptable to different national realities and priorities. One view is that one-size global targets are likely to be unfair, and more importantly ineffective, at the country level. Some suggest that “while the goals and associated targets and indicators should, in the aggregate represent a pathway to sustainable development and the future we want – nonetheless the targets need to be differentiated for countries taking into account the different levels of development.”
The barriers to education, and the most effective solutions, will vary by country. How should this be reflected in a set of universal goals?
What kind of national targets would you like to see put in place?
- 3. SKILLS FOR DECENT WORK
When people escape from poverty, it is most often by joining the middle class, but to do so they will need the education, training and skills to be successful in the job market. Millions of young people and adults, particularly women, are not provided the education and training to develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes they need for a successful transition to adult life and decent jobs. Some have suggested that a lifelong learning approach should be the guiding principle for the post-2015 education agenda which encompasses learning throughout the life-cycle, using both formal and informal delivery mechanisms, including access to early childhood care and education, primary and post-primary education, vocational training and higher education an explicit commitment to providing opportunities for adult learning and literacy, particularly for women.
Should the new agenda include a commitment to expanding access and strengthening training and skills for work and life?
The consultations noted that a major challenge in education and training was to establish better links with employment opportunities and employability. One recurring theme was that education systems are failing to equip children, particularly youth, with the relevant skills and competencies for securing decent work. Several inputs spoke about an education system that was not responsive to the labor market and an outdated curriculum that did not provide skills for the twenty-first century – resulting in such problems as widespread youth unemployment and reduced productivity.
Poor skills development affects the poor inparticular, and people in rural areas and young women often fare the worst. Across other thematic consultations, particularly Growth and Employment, the jobs crisis was acknowledged as a major challenge and youth unemployment as a priority concern. Contributions emphasized that the employment and employability crisis could not be addressed without improving opportunities to improve knowledge and skills crisis and, hence, good-quality education and training are crucial.
Education programs and curricula that are more responsive to market demands are needed, and such programs and curricula should be linked to access to decent jobs.
Do you agree that education programs need to be more responsive to market demands?
How can that be achieved?
- 4. A GOOD INVESTMENT
Across the world, investment in education clearly benefits individuals and societies. A study of 98 countries found that each additional year of education results in, on average, a 10 per cent increase in lifetime earnings – a huge impact on an individual’s opportunities and livelihood. Many see education, with its return of$10–15 for every $1 invested, as the single best investment countries can make towards building prosperous, healthy and equitable societies.
Yet, the inadequacy of human and financial resources and infrastructure seriously undermines progress towards providing quality education for all. For example, an additional $26 billionis needed annually just to achieve basic education in poor countries. Poor learning conditions (shortages of desks, classrooms and adequate school buildings); lack of appropriate teaching and learning materials and books; and poor school environments (particularly inadequate sanitation) were frequently mentioned during the consultations as obstacles to a good quality education.
In addition, there is a crucial “teacher’s gap” at the global level. The quality of education in all countries depends on having a sufficient number of motived teachers, well trained and possessing strong subject-area knowledge. Yet, approximately 5.1 million teachers will have to be replaced and 1.7 million new teaching posts created just to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015.
How should the framework reflect the need for additional resource for education?
Who are the stakeholders and how should they be engaged?
Can technology be used to help expand access and fill the teacher’s gap?
- 5. LINKAGES
One of the key issues in creating a new framework is finding the balance among any proposed goals and the connections between them. The High Level panel report asserts that a true transformation to sustainable development will only happen when countries move forward on several fronts at the same time.Education is critical for individuals, but also for the advancement of societies and has strong links across the development framework.
In addition, the issues related to the education theme are linked to a number of current global trends and transformations such as increasing economic interdependency, globalization and technological development; growing pressure on natural resources and increased energy consumption leading to environmental degradation; rapidly changing labor markets; shifting geopolitics; older and more urbanized populations; population growth and ‘youth bulges’; and growing unemployment and widening inequalities. All of these arguably affect developed and developing countries alike.
Of course, education is about far more than basic literacy and numeracy. While the targets are about access to school and learning, education’s aims are wider. As set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, education enables children to realize their talents and full potential, earn respect for human rights and prepares them for their role as adults. Education should also encourage creative thinking, teamwork and problem solving. It can lead people to learn to appreciate natural resources, and become aware of the importance of sustainable consumption, production and climate change. Quality education positively effects health and lowers family size and fertility rates.
All of the thematic consultations reiterated the call for multi-dimensional and inter-sectorial solutions. How is education connected or where should it be connected?
How should this be reflected in the goals and priorities set out in the Post 2015 Agenda?