people and planet

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facilitate well-informed and meaningful comparisons
between countries and regions so as to spur debates,
especially between governments, civil society and
engaged citizens, on what, how and how well education
systems deliver. Comparative monitoring should not be
seen as an attempt to impose particular global norms,
but rather as an invitation to dialogue, engagement
and commitment.
SYNTHESIS OF MONITORING
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
As the first in the new series of GEM Reports, the 2016
edition has looked in depth at the monitoring issues
related to each individual SDG 4 target. This is timely:
while the basic parameters of the global and thematic
monitoring framework have been agreed, in many cases
important details are still being decided. These issues need
to be presented openly to the international community
as a contribution to technical and political debate.
The scope of the monitoring agenda is wide, and the
issues involved are often complex. This section aims
to provide the bigger picture by drawing together
conclusions, summarizing key messages and indicating
common themes in challenges across targets.
Target 4.1: Following several decades of focus on
participation measures based on enrolment, the new
agenda marks an important advance with its shift to
completion rates, an approach the GEM Report team
has advocated in recent years.
After this positive step, the main outstanding question is
how the international community will monitor ‘relevant and
effective learning outcomes’. This involves the content of
learning (what is ‘relevant’) as well as whether it is achieving
various aims (what is ‘effective’). Monitoring learning
outcomes effectively will require making processes open
and collaborative, and building national learning assessment
systems that take country priorities into account. While
the urge to report on the global indicator is understandable,
the process should respect these two principles.
As important as reporting on learning outcomes is for
monitoring, equally valuable is reporting on key, yet
neglected, background characteristics that will
help explain these outcomes. For example, governments
need to be sensitized to monitor the languages students
speak at home as compared with those in which they
are taught and assessed. Another issue is ensuring
that children who are out of school are not left behind:
reporting needs to include all children or adolescents in a
given age group and not just those who attend school.
Target 4.2: Two issues emerge in relation to the target on
early childhood care, education and development. First,
the diversity of services needs to be better understood.
Current approaches to measurement are highly
fragmented and do not capture many characteristics of
provision, especially the strength of education and learning
components in early childhood programmes outside preprimary
education. This calls for stronger coordination
between national and international surveys to measure
participation across a wider spectrum of programmes.
Second, the search for a measure of early childhood
development must continue. The current measure, based
on the UNICEF Early Childhood Development Index,
has four components but is strongly influenced by the
literacy and numeracy component. These questions
have been criticized as being too advanced and reflecting
norms on early education rather than young children’s
cognitive capacity (McCoy et al., 2016). To understand
whether children are reaching their development
potential, more research is needed on measures that are
valid across a wide range of countries.
Target 4.3: Two clear issues arise in relation to monitoring
technical-vocational, tertiary and adult education.
First, as with early childhood education, the available
monitoring tools are not even close to capturing the
increasingly large diversity of education and learning
opportunities. For example, monitoring systems tend
to focus on formal technical and vocational education.
They do not capture new forms of tertiary education.
Nor do they include adult education, except in a few high
income countries. Similar problems beset household
survey approaches.
Second, the proposed indicator framework entirely
ignores affordability – but progress towards this target
in the next 15 years relies on it. Although debates on
this issue are complex, it is important to agree on basic
parameters that will help ensure government policies on
these types of education and learning opportunities are
better targeted to those most in need.
Target 4.4: This target covers a broad range of skills for
the world of work. However, while education systems
need to help learners acquire several transferrable skills
for decent work, such skills may not be suitable for largescale
monitoring, especially at the global level.
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 377