The 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all, UNESCO, is now available.
The GEM Report, which builds on the experience of the previous EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) series, received a new mandate to assess the progress of education under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2016 Report, the first of a new 15-year series, shows that the world risks achieving its key global education commitments half a century late, having huge consequences for major development outcomes. It warns that education needs to fundamentally change if we are to reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
The first half of the Report highlights the ways that education can serve as a catalyst for the overall sustainable development agenda. It presents compelling arguments and evidence for the types of education that are vital for achieving the goals of poverty reduction, hunger eradication, improved health, gender equality and empowerment, sustainable agriculture, resilient cities and more equal, inclusive and just societies.
The second half responds to the Report’s official mandate, tackling the many challenges concerning ways of assessing progress towards the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4), including concrete recommendations for policy change at the national, regional and global level. Each of the seven education targets and three means of implementation in SDG 4 are examined in turn. In addition, education finance and education systems are analysed, as is the extent to which education can be monitored in the other SDG goals.