"Measuring" What We Care About: Balancing the Politics and Promise of a Sustainable Post-2015 Education Agenda

System level indicators for an education Sustainable Development Goal: Exploring possibilities for the teachers target The UN appears poised to set a development goal for education that is ambitious in targeting quality and... [ view full abstract ]

System level indicators for an education Sustainable Development Goal: Exploring possibilities for the teachers target

The UN appears poised to set a development goal for education that is ambitious in targeting quality and attending to inequality. Incrementally more complex and comprehensive than the Education for All goals, it may include a target for teachers. Suggested indicators for the teacher target are measures of input, typically the number and proportion of trained teachers. Quantitative input or outcomes indicators focus on the level of individual learners and their teachers. Rights-based framing of quality draws attention to the system level processes and policies that enable teaching and learning. Outcome and input indicators give valuable information on inequality but cannot on their own ensure learning contributes to sustainable futures. This paper explores the potential of qualitative conduct indicators that specify conditions for policy or system level functions. It focuses on the target for qualified, well-supported professional teachers, as it is formulated in the Muscat agreement. Conduct indicators could specify conditions for the criteria used to evaluate teachers’ work, or on the freedoms teachers have to form associations for the purpose of strengthening professionalism or protecting their rights as employees. Conduct indicators, however, are not without their difficulties. We suggest the form of wording such indicators could take, how data might be collected and implications for forms and processes of monitoring.

Education for Global Citizenship: Capturing Quality, Equity & Sustainability through Powerful Indicators for a Broad and Bold Education Agenda Post-2015 The World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990 marked the... [ view full abstract ]

Education for Global Citizenship: Capturing Quality, Equity & Sustainability through Powerful Indicators for a Broad and Bold Education Agenda Post-2015

The World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990 marked the first concerted effort to prioritize educational development around the world, and subsequent meetings continue to advance the global agenda for what education—and the world—could become.

The conceptual advance in the targets proposed by the EFA Steering Committee and the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development breaks new ground and presents an opportunity for transformative national and global change. The broad focus on global citizenship shifts the emphasis from educational access to educational outcomes and necessarily addresses equity, social justice, and environmental sustainability on the path toward achieving the goals. Yet, through the process of defining educational goals, tensions emerge about who decides, whose interests are served, and whether everyone benefits.

This paper examines what must change, in spirit and action, to operationalize the commitments laid out in the EFA-SC and OWG targets. The technical approach of our team was designed to mirror discussions that are taking place around the world, to expose assumptions and invite disagreement, and to leverage the diversity of our experiences and insights from work in both developed and developing countries. The paper presents a framework for action that takes up the offer of the UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons for a “New Global Partnership” to fundamentally shift priorities and dynamics to achieve qualitatively different outcomes.

Broad and bold… but simple? The politics of measuring and its potential policy consequences in the context of the post-2015 agenda The debate around targets and indicators for the post-2015 education agenda has made clear... [ view full abstract ]

Broad and bold… but simple? The politics of measuring and its potential policy consequences in the context of the post-2015 agenda

The debate around targets and indicators for the post-2015 education agenda has made clear the attempt to construct a much wider and ambitious agenda for education and development than the one established in Dakar in 2000. Both the EFA Steering Committee and the Open Working Group (OWG) of the United Nations General Assembly have showed a clear ambition in defining goals, targets and indicators that attempt to enter into complex and less tangible domains. From measuring quality and learning outcomes to even measuring education for global citizenship, effective learning environments and teachers’ working conditions, the new global education agenda will put a real challenge for defining appropriate indicators and forms of measuring.

This paper reflects on the possibilities and shortcoming of such an option. Building on the analysis of three different groups of targets defined by the EFA SC and the OWG (i.e. relevant learning outcomes, quality teachers and global citizenship), the paper raises some critical political aspects regarding the selection of indicators, their possibilities for measuring and their potential policy consequences.

As at the time of this submission, there exist seven targets developed by the EFA Steering Committee (the Muscat Agreement) and ten targets developed through the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N.... [ view full abstract ]

As at the time of this submission, there exist seven targets developed by the EFA Steering Committee (the Muscat Agreement) and ten targets developed through the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N. General Assembly. Both sets of targets share much common ground but also contain some significant differences. The indicators currently being developed and assigned to these targets will be key in influencing whether and how they gain traction politically and eventually in practice. The space of ‘indicators development’ has become largely populated by “experts” and significantly dislocated from the rhetoric of a bold and transformative agenda that leaves no one behind.

This detachment is perhaps due in part to “the unfinished business” of the EFA Goals or the education MDG and the sense created by this unfinished agenda that the next logical step is to devise a plan to complete these outstanding benchmarks before casting our gaze farther afield. What is missed in this quick grab at logic and ‘common sense’ is that the alternatives reached for within this global development space become confined within already existing possibilities with the consequent closing off of other transformative possibilities.

The symposia will explore possibilities that aim to hold a balance between making progress on the unfinished agenda while finding ways to “measure” the things we care about. In presenting these possibilities, the papers will respond to the current state of the debate as at September 2015, by which time the indicators development process would have rapidly moved ahead.