Monitoring Education
Development
Albert Motivans
a.motivans@unesco.org
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
International Forum on Monitoring National Development:
Issues and Challenges
Beijing, People’s Republic of China
28 September, 2011
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics
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Founded in 1999, in Montreal since 2001
About 120 staff around the world
Mandated to maintain cross-nationally
comparable databases for:
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Education
Science and technology
Culture
Communication and
Information
UIS mandate
• Collects, produces and disseminates crossnationally comparable data
• Analyzes comparative data
• Develops international classifications and
maintains standards and definitions
• Develops technical capacity within countries
• Advocates for statistics as a tool for better policies
Monitoring Education Development
Outline
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How has education development changed
in the last decade?
What are the new demands for education
statistics?
What efforts to meet these demands build
upon the existing monitoring framework?
Education is vital to meet all
of the development goals
EFA and MDG goals
Education for All
1.
Expanding early childhood care
and education
2.
Universal primary education by
2015
3.
Equitable access to learning and
life skills programmes for young
people and adults
4.
50% increase in adult literacy rates
by 2015
5.
Gender parity by 2005 and gender
equality by 2015
6.
Improving quality of education
Millennium Development Goals
Obj. 2: Achieve universal primary
education
- Target 3: Completion of primary
schooling by all children by 2015
Obj. 3: Promote gender equality
and empower women
- Target 4: Eliminating gender
disparities by 2005 in primary and
secondary education, and at all
levels no later that 2015
Gains in primary school enrolments,
but not all children benefit
Extreme education poverty
% with less than 2 years of education
(age 17-22)
Nigeria , poor, Hausa, girls
25%
97%
Kenya , rural, Somali, girls
8%
96%
Ghana , northern region, rural, girls
17%
84%
Pakistan, rural, Sindhi, girls
31%
73%
India, poor, Uttar Pradesh, girls
20%
• In Kenya, 96% of rural
Somali girls (aged 17-22) have
less than 2 years of education.
• The primary net attendance
rate for Somali girls is only
30%.
57%
Country average
Group average
Source: UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2010
Achieving quality education for all
children is still an unfinished agenda
91 97
% ever
enrolled
74
% reach
grade 5
% with
minimum
mastery in
language
31
19
7
Malawi
Namibia
Sources: UNESCO Institute for Statistics and EFA GMR
Increased government investment in
education in Africa in the 2000s
But is it sustainable given recent declines in GDP?
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Financing Education in sub-Saharan Africa, 2011
Four key directions:
meeting emerging data needs
• Education quality: results of learning at all
stages of education provision
• Equity: measures that capture those who are
excluded from opportunity
• Underserved sectors: Indicators for areas
outside of the formal education system
• Focus on regional target-setting, measurement and benchmarking
Direct measures of student learning
outcomes and adult skills
• Are learners achieving intended knowledge
and skills?
• Large wave of large-scale student assessment
at the regional and national level at different
points in educational pathway
• Challenges: Technical capacity, cost, underused
data
Measuring education disparities
• Who is excluded from educational
opportunities? Do education systems reach the
“hardest to reach”?
• Harmonised international household surveys
has led to a critical mass of comparative
education indicators allow production of
disaggregated indicators by target group (low
SES, rural, etc.)
• Challenges: limited in national scope and use,
not owned by national policymakers
Data needs beyond formal education
Constituencies outside of formal basic education
– Adult literacy and learning
• CONFINTEA, Belem, 2010 – new reporting tool developed for
countries to report on progress towards adult learning
• Direct assessment of literacy skills (IALS, ALL, LAMP, PIACC) mainly
in more developed countries
– Early Childhood Education and Development
• Global Conference, Moscow, 2010 – efforts include generating a
global holistic index of child development
– Youth and skills
• Global TVET Conference, China, 2012
• Challenges: Consensus on conceptual frameworks
has been elusive and national statistical systems are
not well-developed
Regional initiatives in setting
targets and monitoring
• 2nd Decade of Education, African Union
• Goals of the Summit of the Americas,
Miami 1994 / Santiago 1998
• Education Goals 2021, agreed at the
XVIIth Ibero-American Conference on
Education
Need to be realistic about effort
and what can be achieved
ECCE
NFE/TVET
Quality
Equity
Conceptual and statistical frameworks
for education statistics
From ISCED 1997 to ISCED 2011:
new developments
• Extends ISCED 0 to include education for younger
children
• Better defines formal and non-formal education
• Simplifies programme orientation (general and
vocational)
• Redefines education at the tertiary level
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Short-cycle tertiary
Bachelor and equivalent
Master and equivalent
Doctoral and equivalent
• New approach to measuring educational attainment
Data sources for education indicators
Strengths
Limitations
Admin
istrative
data
Regular (annual)
Low cost to compile
Measures system outputs
Doesn’t capture demand
Data quality issues
Requires external population data
(source of error)
Surveys and
censuses
Covers children outside of school
system / demand for education
Allows for analysis of subgroups
and disadvantage
Single data source for both
participation and population
Little
ownership
of
data,
especially by line ministries
Doesn’t link to other data (e.g.,
teacher or finance)
Ad-hoc and irregular
Can be costly exercises
Direct
measures
Directly measures outcomes - Costly,
requires
technical capacity
skills and knowledge
present
significant
often not
Aim is to move countries up to the next level
towards better data quality…
SELFSUSTAINING
INTERMEDIATE
BASIC
Lacking statistical
infrastructure; Little
government
commitment and use
of data; less need for
intl. comparable data
Basic data channels
in place; some
commitment to data
use; data fragmented
across ministries;
coverage and
relevance; regional
comparisons
Stable information
system, good links
between users and
producers of data,
responsive to relevant
policy issues, but the
demands are more
complex. Intl
comparisons used
widely
Moving the education
monitoring agenda forward
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Efforts should build on the principal of
national ownership
Agree on a common language and
understanding of the concepts
Measurement frameworks which are
reached by consensus
Data collection that is sustainable and is
built into planning
Recognise technical capacity needs
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Partnerships are essential
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