UN: World ‘falling far behind’ in providing learning for all

MANILA, Philippines — The fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda is dedicated to ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. It’s a tall task. According to the UN, the world is “falling far behind” in providing quality education to everyone.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, progress in education-related goals was already slow. The pandemic caused more detrimental effects and resulted in learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

According to the UN in their 2023 report, without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030. An estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

READ: Education reform: Old as history

The UN emphasizes that education financing must become a national investment priority. Countries should push for measures like making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure, and embracing digital transformation.

SDG 4 is a key enabler of most other SDGs since education liberates the intellect and allows for prosperity and opportunities, making it possible for every person to contribute to a progressive, healthy society.

Because global progress in education has not been fast enough, there is great pressure for governments and the private sector to scale up programs that prioritize the delivery of quality education. Some good practices and projects from around the world provide ideas on what has worked in achieving SDG 4 and its target goals.

Nigerian program

The RecyclesPay Educational Project in Nigeria is a “Plastic-For-Tuition” project implemented by the African Cleanup Initiative. Its primary goal is to pay for the tuition of over 10,000 vulnerable students in time for the end of the 2030 Agenda.

The RecyclesPay project integrates environmental, economic, and social indicators by reaching communities without access to proper waste management and providing a sustainable system that provides solutions to the waste problem, all while empowering families, schools, and communities.

The project targets low-income communities and seeks to provide parents an opportunity to pay their ward’s school fees using plastic bottles and other recyclable materials. By doing so, the project helps ensure that children from underprivileged communities remain in school, while also identifying new ways to prevent plastic waste and promote sustainable living among vulnerable groups and communities.

Since it began in December 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria, the project has arrested the plummeting number of out-of-school children, from 13 million during the period when the project started to 10.5 million. In just two years, it has helped 2,172 children, with 50 schools on board. The project has also recovered 1,123,488 bottles and cans, which amounts to 38,741 kilograms of recyclable waste.

In many schools around the world, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities and services are inadequate, resulting in preventable diseases among children. These negatively affect the kids’ wellness and ability to learn.

The Fit for School (FIT) Program, established in 2011 to support ministries and departments of education on the national and subnational levels, was formed to help develop standards and implement guidelines for WASH in schools based on the basic service level set out in SDGs 4 and 6 (access to water and sanitation for all).

Thailand on track

The FIT program predominantly works with the education sector on different levels to support the development and implementation of minimum WASH standards in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, and the Philippines. The program’s implementation is intersectoral—it brings together WASH improvements and effective health interventions under the leadership of the education sector based on the principles of school-based management.

According to the 2024 Sustainable Development Report, Thailand is one country that’s on track to achieve SDG 4. Its Ministries of Education and Interior partnered with The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) to target the early childhood development and education of 4.3 million children under 6. Three-quarters of children aged 36 to 59 months received early childhood education, while 78 percent of children aged 24 to 59 months are developmentally on track.

Unicef also prioritized foundational learning, benefiting some 100,000 children through school-based on-site and online activities. A mobile library focused on digital skills also reached more than 13,000 children and over 1,000 more in Mae Hong Son province, home to ethnic minorities.

The initiative included mapping early childcare services, deploying the private sector’s best practices in support of family-friendly policies, enhancing early childhood learning, engaging families in child development, and addressing barriers for minorities and children with disabilities—efforts that strengthened the quality of early childhood education in disadvantaged areas.

Dismal performance

In the Philippines, the country’s Constitution assigns the highest budgetary priority to education. According to a 2023 discussion paper published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, from 2010 to 2020, about 85 percent of the national education budget went to the Department of Education (DepEd). DepEd has developed multiple programs to improve participation in basic education, such as the Alternative Delivery Modes, Open High School, and the Alternative Learning System.

In 2017, Republic Act No. 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, was passed into law. It grants free tuition in state and local universities and colleges as well as state-run technical-vocational institutions, marking significant progress in providing access to tertiary education to young Filipinos.

Despite these, Filipino students still lag behind the rest of the world. The results of the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa)—a global study conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that evaluates the academic performance of 15-year-old students in three subjects every three years—revealed that Filipino students were five to six years behind in mathematics, science, and reading compared to their counterparts from most of the participating countries.

The Philippines’ performance showed very little difference compared to results in 2018, when the country first participated in the assessment. In the 2018 Pisa, the country scored the lowest in reading and second lowest in math and science among 79 participating nations. For the 2022 assessment, the Philippines ranked sixth to last in reading and mathematics while in science, it ranked third to last among 81 countries.

To address the country’s dismal performance in the 2018 Pisa, then Education Secretary Leonor Briones decided to lead “aggressive reforms” such as the review and updating of the K-12 curriculum, improvement of learning facilities, and upskilling and reskilling of teachers and school heads through professional development programs.

In August 2023, DepEd also launched its revamp of the K-12 curriculum called the “Matatag” curriculum, spearheaded by the now resigned DepEd chief Vice President Sara Duterte. Under this curriculum, lessons from Kindergarten to Grade 10 will focus on five foundational skills: language, reading and literacy, mathematics, makabansa, and good manners and right conduct.

It remains to be seen how these programs are improving the state of education in the country.

Sources: sdgs.un.org, globalgoals.org, thailand.un.org, dashboard.sdgindex.org, pidswebs.pids.gov.ph, aspbae.org, unifast.gov.ph, officialgazette.gov.ph