people and planet

5
Statistical tables 1
INTRODUCTION
FROM EDUCATION FOR ALL TO THE
EDUCATION SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
GOAL: NEW AGENDA, NEW STATISTICAL TABLES
With the adoption in September 2015 of the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development – which sets new
development priorities, including for education through
the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) – and,
in November 2015, of the Education 2030 Framework
for Action at the 38th session of the UNESCO General
Conference, the Education for All (EFA) cycle came to an
end. With this edition of the Global Education Monitoring
Report (GEM Report), the statistical tables are evolving to
reflect the new education agenda.
The tables have been reorganized to reflect and align
with (a) the aspirational nature and great ambition of
the Education 2030 agenda, which has at its core equity
and inclusion and embraces a lifelong perspective; (b) the
seven SDG 4 targets and three means of implementation,
which are not only about access to, participation in and
completion of education, but also have education quality
at their core in terms of inputs, outputs, processes,
learning outcomes and environments, and the skills
youth and adults must be equipped with for decent
work; and (c) a broad set of 43 internationally comparable
thematic indicators, of which 11 are global indicators. 2
Consequently, the statistical tables of the GEM Report
aim to be more comprehensive than in earlier reports,
while reflecting significant limitations in terms of data
availability and country coverage, particularly regarding
some indicators that still need to be defined and
developed. Accordingly, placeholders or proxy indicators
are occasionally used. These statistical tables contain
more indicators than in earlier reports, particularly
on education quality, learning outcomes, youth and
adult skills (including not only literacy and numeracy
but also information and communications technology
skills) and tertiary education. While aligned with the
proposed thematic and global indicators, the statistical
tables include additional indicators – such as repetition,
dropout, and transition from primary to secondary
education and from secondary to tertiary – which remain
critical but were left out of the new indicator set.
In addition to administrative data provided to the UIS
by education ministries worldwide, the statistical tables
rely on data from other sources, including national,
regional and international learning assessments;
national and international household surveys, such as
the Demographic and Health Surveys and UNICEF’s
Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys; and bodies including
the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
(UNAIDS), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), UNICEF, the United Nations
Population Division (UNPD), the World Bank and the
World Health Organization (WHO).
The new statistical tables are organized by targets and
means of implementation instead of by education level
(from pre-primary to tertiary) as was formerly the case;
this results in some seeming anomalies, such as early
childhood care and education coming after primary and
secondary education. As in the past, the tables include
domestic education finance, which, though absent from
the SDG 4 targets, is a key means of implementation
and an enabling factor to achieve the targets. Because of
the comprehensiveness of the new statistical tables and
the size constraints of the GEM Report, they continue
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 393