Executive Board Hundred and ninetieth session 190 EX/INF.5 PARIS, 2 October 2012 English & French only Item 19 of the provisional agenda EDUCATION FIRST: THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL s INITIATIVE ON EDUCATION SUMMARY The Director-General informs the Executive Board of Education First, the United Nations Secretary-General s Initiative on Education, for which she is the Executive Secretary of its Steering Committee. This document contains information on the objectives of the initiative and the role of UNESCO. 1. Education First is a five-year United Nations (UN) initiative to bolster global action on education. It leverages the convening power of the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to generate a renewed push to achieve the education goals set for 2015. The ambition is to spur a global movement to provide quality, relevant and inclusive education for all, with linked gains for the broad development agenda, including all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This will not be possible without a strong scaling-up of political and economic support. Generating additional political commitment and mobilizing funding through advocacy efforts are therefore major objectives of the initiative. 2. The decision by Ban Ki-moon to make education a priority of his second term is highly significant. This is the first time that a United Nations Secretary-General has given such prominence to education. It reflects both his own personal experience and the success of UNESCO s sustained advocacy that education is the single most important driver of development. At a time when progress towards education for all (EFA) is stalling, and education has dropped down the international development agenda, the launch of the initiative is strongly welcomed. By making education more visible on the agendas of Heads of State and world leaders, it is an opportunity both to accelerate progress towards the EFA goals and to ensure that education figures prominently within any new framework for development. 3. UNESCO has played a pivotal role in shaping Education First from the outset. The Education Sector was entrusted with establishing the overall concept for the initiative, which was refined and then agreed upon through an interagency consultative process that brought together the EFA convening agencies in addition to UN Women and the Global Partnership for Education. As such, UNESCO has been able to ensure that Education First is aligned with the Organization s strategic objectives in education and reinforces its current activities in order to accelerate progress towards EFA at country level.
190 EX/INF.5 page 2 4. UNESCO s Director-General also serves as Executive Secretary of the Education First Steering Committee set up and chaired by the Secretary-General. The role of the Steering Committee is to advise on the strategic direction of the initiative; serve as advocates; mobilize public, political and financial support; and assess progress and achievements. It comprises the heads of all relevant multilateral agencies as well as top-level representatives from civil society, the private sector, foundations and youth organizations. The Committee met for the first time (New York, 30 July 2012) to endorse the main priorities of Education First. 5. The Secretary-General has also selected a group of 10 Champions two per region as defined by the United Nations 1 to galvanize support for the initiative among governments and intergovernmental bodies and ensure its strong visibility. However, Education First is an initiative for all Member States, and every effort will be made to build broad political engagement and ensure that the initiative is aligned with countries priorities. 6. A Technical Advisory Group (TAG), comprising UNESCO and other education partners, has been set up to serve as the substantive hub, shape key messages and advise the Steering Committee. The Brookings Institution in Washington has been designated by the Office of the Secretary-General to act as secretariat for the TAG. UNESCO has continued to take responsibility for the content and vision of the initiative and for developing the content of a website 2 ; UNICEF has coordinated discussions on communication and outreach. Following the launch of Education First, these working structures will be reviewed to optimally ensure follow-up. What Education First will do content and priorities 7. The initiative puts forward three priorities: (1) Put every child in school. This first priority identifies the persistent barriers to school enrolment and completion, such as poverty, conflict, gender and limited educational options beyond primary education, recognizing that strong disparities remain within and across countries. As factors of exclusion and their causes vary from place to place, the need for tailor-made solutions is emphasized, underscoring that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. Special attention is given to the needs of children in conflictaffected situations, which account for 42% of the 61 million children out of primary school. (2) Improve the quality of learning. The second priority underscores that ensuring access is only the first step to fulfilling the right to education and urges renewed emphasis on the quality of learning. It not only points to in-school factors affecting education, such as teacher quality, learning materials, the language of instruction and the monitoring and assessment of learning outcomes, but also external factors such as malnutrition, the family environment and the mismatch of skills and job markets. (3) Foster global citizenship. The third priority calls for transforming education so that it can assume its central role in promoting democratic values, peaceful coexistence, responsible citizenship and sustainable development. Emphasizing that today s interconnected global challenges require a major transformation in the way we think and act, it urges broad reforms to ensure that learners are equipped with the attitudes and competencies to be engaged and responsible global citizens. 8. To support progress in these priority areas, 10 key actions with concrete targets have been set: (1) Enrol all children in school; (2) Ensure all children are literate and numerate; (3) Train more teachers; (4) Equip classrooms with books and learning material; (5) Sustain education in 1 2 African Group: South Africa and Tunisia; Asia-Pacific Group: Bangladesh and China; Eastern European Group: Croatia and Russia; Latin American and Caribbean Group: Brazil and Guyana; Western European and Others Group: Australia and Denmark. http://www.globaleducationfirst.org/.
190 EX/INF.5 page 3 humanitarian crises, especially conflict; (6) Prepare student for livelihoods; (7) Improve child nutrition; (8) Instil lifelong learning; (9) Foster global citizenship; (10) Close the finance gap. 9. The initiative asserts that everyone, both within and outside the education sector, has a role to play and that they must hold themselves accountable to children, parents and communities. Strong emphasis is given to engaging non-traditional partners behind education, such as the business communities, philanthropic organizations and the media, in an effort to make education the first priority on the global development agenda. Role of UNESCO 10. UNESCO will continue to provide strategic direction following the launch of the initiative on 26 September 2012. As Executive Secretary of the Steering Committee, the Director-General has the responsibility to help translate the vision of Education First into practice over the next five years. In so doing, UNESCO will ensure that the initiative builds upon existing education efforts and reinforces effective partnerships already in place. Given the Organization s proven expertise in monitoring education, UNESCO will also have a special role to play in assessing progress under the different action areas. 11. The three priorities of expanding access, enhancing the quality of learning and fostering global citizenship are in line with UNESCO s key priorities and reflected in its regular programme and budget. Education First offers UNESCO an opportunity to accelerate this work at the country level, but also to focus global attention on critical areas where the Organization is best placed to take a lead. (a) The first is literacy for girls and women. It is unconscionable that in the twenty-first century still some 500 million women cannot read and write, and are deprived of their fundamental right to education. Moreover, evidence shows that when a woman is educated, her whole community benefits, leading to progress towards the development of the whole nation. Indeed, the children of educated mothers have better opportunities to enrol and stay in school. UNESCO sees Education First as a chance to lead a renewed global push to promote female literacy. Critical here will be scaling up youth and adult literacy through targeted programmes focused on women, with a particular focus on the 41 countries that comprise almost 85% of the world s 775 million illiterate youth and adults. Equally important is expanding efforts for girls education to ensure that they develop pre-literacy skills in their early years of life, enrol in primary school level, complete it, and continue to secondary and higher-level education. UNESCO will help countries enhance their non-formal systems and develop equivalency frameworks that link nonformal and informal learning with further learning or technical and vocational education and training in formal systems. Strengthening the links between education and the world of work is also important. Indeed, lack of relevance is a major factor in school drop-out, in particular among girls. Education First provides a platform for mobilizing broader support behind these efforts, building on the recommendations made during the High-Level International Round Table on Literacy (Paris, 6-7 September 2012). The initiative can help UNESCO in raising literacy on the political agenda and encourage governments and donors to give much higher priority to literacy in their development strategies and budgets. (b) A second area of importance for UNESCO is teachers. This is a key priority and critical to progress across all three objectives of Education First, in particular the commitment to improve the quality of learning. UNESCO will use the Secretary- General s initiative to strengthen focus on teacher issues and increase support to Member States in line with the Organization s current teacher strategy.
190 EX/INF.5 page 4 The main emphasis of UNESCO s strategy is on supporting Member States configure a teaching force that works in an environment that rewards professional improvement and is committed to improve the opportunities for student learning with well-qualified and duly-supported teaching practices. Three objectives drive this work. The first is to bridge the teacher gap in priority countries, particularly in sub-saharan Africa, by developing further national capacities to increase the number of qualified teachers and deploy, support and manage them effectively. Education First provides an opportunity to scale up ongoing efforts and disseminate effective innovations in this domain, including in the area of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). The second is to improve understanding of what constitutes effective teaching, particularly in contexts of disadvantage, including conflict- and disaster-affected situations, and of mechanisms to support teachers and their professional development while removing obstacles to their success. Education First offers a platform to expand the depth and reach of this knowledge base. The third is to inform the global debate about teaching. UNESCO will use the platform of Education First to promote the more rigorous application and monitoring of teachers standards and stimulate inclusive dialogue around key issues related to teachers status and conditions. (c) A final critical element for UNESCO under Education First is fostering global citizenship. The decision by the Secretary-General to make this a priority is a particularly important achievement for UNESCO. It reaffirms the vision, enshrined in UNESCO s Constitution, that education is the single most powerful means to promote peace, human rights, democratic values and sustainable development. Through its leadership of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, UNESCO has built up strong momentum for the reform of education systems to ensure they prepare learners to be engaged and responsible global citizens. Education First will help UNESCO to advance this work in several respects. In particular, UNESCO will use the initiative to promote the whole-school approach as a means for transforming the teaching and learning environment. Young people learn much from schools, but what they learn is not only in their lessons. How schools are managed, who has a say, how conflicts are handled all teach a great deal to children and youth. The characteristics of a whole-school approach are that it integrates the principles of global citizenship across all aspects of the school which, in its entirety, becomes a model for good citizenship: school management is democratic and participatory, sustainable environmental practices are followed, students are encouraged to work collaboratively, cultural and linguistic diversity is celebrated, and there is a zero tolerance policy towards all forms of violence, bullying and discrimination. UNESCO will pilot this approach through its Associated Schools network (ASPnet). Education First can help UNESCO in mobilizing partners behind this whole-school approach. It can also support the Organization in raising awareness of important, but often neglected, aspects of school life that pose barriers to school attendance and learning, such as homophobic bullying, where UNESCO is leading global research, advocacy and policy. 12. Across all these areas female literacy, teachers and global citizenship UNESCO will seek to put a stronger spotlight on the role of information and communication technologies in enhancing the delivery of instruction and transforming the learning process. The Organization has been pioneering new approaches and helping to set standards in areas such as mobile literacy, open
190 EX/INF.5 page 5 educational resources, and teacher ICT competencies. How to better harness innovation for learning will be an important cross-cutting theme for Education First. 13. These are just some of the ways in which Education First will support strategic objectives of UNESCO as lead agency for Education for All. The Global EFA Meeting ((GEM), Paris, 21-23 November 2012), the primary multi-stakeholder forum for EFA, will be an important opportunity to discuss further how the momentum generated by the initiative Education First can best be harnessed to reinforce the EFA movement. Printed on recycled paper