SDG4 Leadership commits to accelerate action to transform education in Paris meeting

The SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee (HLSC) Leaders convened for their Annual Meeting on 8 November at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, at the margins of the UNESCO General Conference, to examine SDG4 progress and the transformative actions that countries have undertaken following the Transforming Education Summit (TES).

Providing an opportunity to delve deeper into the current challenges towards transforming education systems, including mobilising the required resources, this year’s annual Leaders’ Meeting resulted in the adoption of ten decisions under three themes:

• Accelerating and monitoring progress towards SDG4;

• Transforming education financing; and

• Advancing the global education agenda.

The decisions of the Steering Committee, the global apex body for education, will guide the work of the global education community in the coming year.

Recognizing that the world is still off-track in achieving our education goals by 2030 and that inequalities in education were further exacerbated globally after the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are realizing that more concrete actions are needed to live up to the commitments.

In September 2023, one year after the TES, UNESCO launched the Dashboard of Country Commitments and Actions, which serves as a tool not only to monitor and analyze the commitments made last year, but also to record transformative actions undertaken by countries since. The Dashboard is hosted on the SDG 4 Knowledge Hub, which is the one-stop shop for all SDG4 knowledge assets.

A first analysis of countries’ actions was presented during the HLSC meeting, highlighting that over 90% of countries reporting transformative actions in education focused on digital learning, curricular content, teachers, and gender equality.  The full picture of progress made will be presented at the Global Education Meeting in 2024.

An additional challenge in accelerating progress towards SDG4 is the persisting lack of adequate funding made available for education. The UNESCO 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report estimates that between 2023 and 2030, the average annual financing gap amounts to a staggering USD 97 billion for low- and lower-middle-income countries to reach their national SDG4 targets.

The HLSC Leaders’ message to the global community is clear: Education is not a cost but the smartest long-term investment that governments can make. Prioritizing funding for education will not only accelerate progress towards achieving SDG4 but, as a critical enabling investment, will also unlock progress towards achieving all other Sustainable Development Goals.

To this end, several decisions were adopted at the meeting, geared towards transforming education financing, including improving coordination between multilateral organisations, and supporting the development and scale-up of innovative financing solutions.

The HLSC Leaders affirmed their support for the recommendations set forth by the High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession. This Panel, supported by a joint UNESCO-ILO Secretariat, drew together ministers, teachers, students, unions, civil society and academia in the past months.  The Panel elaborated a set of recommendations on transforming the teaching profession.

The recommendations emphasize, among other aspects, the need for highly qualified, well-supported and properly remunerated teachers, and aim to raise the esteem of the profession.

The meeting also deliberated on upcoming opportunities for highest-level political advocacy around education in view of upcoming major global summits, including the 2024 Summit of the Future and the 2025 World Social Summit — a move that will ascertain that education remains as priority for countries.

The HLSC meeting concluded with the announcement of the cohort of new committee members, who will begin their mandate in January 2024, building on the many achievements of the first two years of the new SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee.

Source: unesco