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Sustainable Development Goal 4 update: Six years to 2030!
Asia-Pacific countries have accelerated efforts to overcome the region’s education data gaps, with only six years remaining to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This was the focus of this year’s 6th Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 (APMED 6) held in Bangkok, Thailand from 10 to 13 September.
SDG4 is a UN 2030 goal that was set in 2015. This goal aims to achieve learning opportunities for all people, regardless of factors such as gender, race and lifestyle, by the year 2030.
This year’s APMED theme was ‘Accelerating actions – Transforming the “what” and the “how’ of learning for a sustainable future’.
Tawaqa Naisoro, the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Team Leader for Education Data, represented the Pacific at APMED 6 and alerted the region about the Pacific’s current SDG 4 status.
“Current indicators show that at the midpoint of the Education 2030 agenda, the [Pacific] region is fundamentally off track to successfully integrate SDG4 as part of their national policies. This is largely due to the impacts of climate-related disasters continuously affecting the region and the post-pandemic effects of COVID-19,” Naisoro highlighted.
Learning poverty is a new metric proposed by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) designed to spotlight low levels of learning and track progress toward ensuring that all children acquire foundational skills. A study from the UIS done between 2017 – 2019 shows that learning poverty has increased substantially from 35% to 45% in East Asia and the Pacific.
APMED 6 offered several recommendations to overcome the current gaps in achieving SDG4, including investing in teachers, formulating national benchmarks for minimum proficiency levels (MPLs) and ensuring gender equality in education. These recommendations aim to strengthen the Pacific to get back on track to achieve SDG 4.
The SPC member states actively participated in panel discussions and provided experiences and advice to countries in both Asia and the Pacific region.
“This [shift] shows an extraordinary amount of growth on the part of the Pacific, from being mere observers to active participants, with their contemporaries recognising the Pacific as a reliable source of education data,” Naisoro explained.
SPC will continue to support its members in achieving the education goals set under the UN 2030 Agenda by strengthening relationships with its APMED stakeholders in the next six years.
