people and planet

9
skills in information
and communication
The SDG education
technology
targets are stronger and education
than the Millennium for sustainable
development and global
Development Goals in
citizenship. There is
various ways
also a separate target
on ensuring teachers
are well qualified, a key
condition for quality education and learning outcomes.
The SDG education targets are also more oriented to
outcomes and more closely aligned with a lifelong
learning framework.
On the other hand, they are more ambitious, some would
say too much so. For example, it was generally expected
that target 4.1 would focus on universal lower secondary
education, but instead it extended to upper secondary.
While there are strong reasons to raise aspirations, this
report shows that the expanded target is unattainable.
At past rates of progress, even universal primary
completion is not guaranteed by 2030.
■■
Thematic: The scope of a set of global indicators that
aims to capture the entire development agenda will
be unlikely to fully satisfy the needs of communities
interested in specific goals and themes. An additional
set of globally comparable indicators is therefore
needed for individual targets within goals such
as education.
■■
Regional: Some indicators may not be globally
relevant but are essential for regional constituencies
to respond to specific contexts and policy priorities.
■■
National: Every country has its own context and
priorities, which call for tailored monitoring and
reporting mechanisms.
The UN Statistical Commission established the Interagency
and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs)
in March 2015 to develop global indicators for monitoring
the new goals and targets. The commission agreed a
list of indicators in March 2016 as a first step before
endorsement by the Economic and Social Council in July
2016 and adoption by the General Assembly in September.
REACHING CONSENSUS ON EDUCATION
MONITORING INDICATORS AND MECHANISMS
Monitoring progress towards achievement of the targets
is critical to provide guidance for what needs to be done,
by when and by whom. However, the SDG process for
determining monitoring indicators and mechanisms is
complex and political. This is unsurprising given the large
number of targets, the ambiguities in their formulation
and the diversity of stakeholders. To better understand the
proposed education monitoring indicators and mechanisms,
the process through which the overall SDG monitoring
indicators and mechanisms were adopted is described below.
Indicators
The Synthesis Report of the UN Secretary-General on the
Post-2015 Agenda, released in December 2014, offers a
useful framework to understand the layers of monitoring
required (United Nations, 2014b). The report identified
four levels, each of which has distinct implications for
indicator selection:
■■
Global: To monitor the 17 goals and 169 targets,
globally comparable indicators are needed. Countries
would commit to report on them and the results
would appear in an annual SDG Report that would
succeed the MDG Report.
However, it is widely recognized that further
methodological work is needed. The expert group has
classified the proposed indicators into three tiers,
depending on whether established methodology and
sufficient data coverage exist. It will work until March
2017 on a plan for further development of indicators
without established methodology. It will also agree on
a global reporting mechanism and identify the entities
to be responsible for compiling data for reporting on
individual indicators.
For the education goal, 11 global indicators have been
agreed, based on an original submission by UNESCO
and UNICEF, co-chairs of the Technical Support Team
for SDG 4. There is one indicator per target except in the
case of Target 4.2, for which two are proposed. Four are
identified as tier I indicators (‘established methodology
… and data regularly produced by countries’), three as
tier II indicators (‘established methodology … but data
are not regularly produced by countries’), two as tier III
indicators (‘no established methodology’) and two have
been classified at multiple levels (IAEG-SDGs, 2016).
The 11 global indicators do not by any means capture
the full scope of the agenda. Hence UNESCO set up
a Technical Advisory Group on post-2015 education
indicators to prepare consolidated recommendations
on measurement of an education goal, targets and
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 173