UNESCO’s understanding of education
quality
Atilio Pizarro
Section Chief for Planning, Management, Monitoring and Evaluation
OREALC/UNESCO Santiago
International Commitments on Education
EFA Dakar Goals
1. Expanding early childhood care
and education
2. Free and compulsory primary
education for all
3. Learning & life skills for young
people and adults
4. Increase adult literacy
5. Eliminating gender disparities
and achieving gender equality
6. Improving all aspects of the
quality of education
Millennium Development Goals
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and
empower women
2015
Assessing progress towards EFA Goals
in Latin America and the Caribbean
 UPE is no longer a challenge with overall 95%
enrolment (UIS, 2008)
 Access to pre-primary level (ECCE), as well as
access and completion of secondary education &
TVET, are serious concerns.
 Half of the youth population (20 to 24 years) have not
completed secondary education, the threshold for
being out of poverty.
 Need to improve quality of education at all levels.
 The great social inequality in Latin America and the
Caribbean is a problem that education has not yet
been able to solve.
EFA Goal 6 Remains a Challenge
 Undeniable progress toward expanding
access to education
 It has not been met by comparable
progress in improving education quality,
which affect, to a large extent, the most
vulnerable individuals and groups.
 This is a permanent challenge in the region
that shall continue beyond 2015
UNESCO Must
 Ensure that Education for All (EFA) remains
a priority on the global agenda,
 Support countries’ efforts to meet the six
EFA goals by 2015, with a specific
emphasis on equity.
 Act beyond this:

Sustainable development

Inclusion,

Social cohesion and social justice,

Life-long learning

Higher education and research.
Why focus on Quality?
 Need to increase the effectiveness of
education and training systems.
 Need to reduce the observed inequalities
among various categories of the population.
 Growing diversity and complexity of
societies:




Migration,
Urbanization,
Cultural globalization, and
Greater access to expanding sources and
channels of transmission of information,
knowledge and values.
Quality education
 An effective means to fight poverty,
 Empowers individuals,
 Prepares people to embrace and adapt to
change but also to manage and influence it,
 Build democracies, and foster peaceful
societies,
 A human right and public good
 Is an indispensable element for achieving
sustainable development
 Long life learning
UNESCO’s understanding of education quality
Learning: The Treasure Within, Report to UNESCO of
the International Commission on Education for the
Twenty-first Century, Jacques Delors (1996):

Learning to know

Learning to do

Learning to live together

Learning to be
Quality – the purpose of Education
Two 2 key elements :
 To ensure the cognitive development of
learners
 In nurturing the creative and emotional
growth of learners and in helping them to
acquire values and attitudes for
responsible citizenship
What Do We Mean by Education Quality?
 Frequent approach: quality is equal to the
efficiency and effectiveness
 Multidimensional concept
 Implies a value judgment
 A dynamic concept that changes and
evolves with time and changes
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New times, new demands in LAC
 The countries of the region are living large
social and political changes: new
paradigms and models of development,
new constitutional frameworks and
reforms to the education laws.
 Constitutional and legal mandates pose
profound challenges to education
systems.
A rights-based approach: a paradigm
shift; EFA/PRELAC (UNESCO, 2002)
• .
 To go from an emphasis on inputs and structures
to one on people
 To go from mere transmission of content and
understanding to comprehensive development of
human beings.
 To go from homogeneity to diversity
 To go from focus placed on schools alone as
venues for education to ‘educating society’
UNESCO’s holistic and rights-based
approach
 Education is a public good and a human
right from which nobody can be excluded
 Calls for inclusive quality education
 A particular focus on vulnerable and
marginalized groups.
 Schooling be free and obligatory
 Rights of non-discrimination and full
participation.
 Assure equity in three dimensions: in
access, in process, and in results.
Quality Education for All:
a human rights issue
OREALC / UNESCO Santiago (2007),
www.unesco.cl
Under the rights framework base for
quality of education, it has been
identified three substantive aspects:
Relevance
Pertinence
Equity
Also, since being a public action matter, it is included two key
operational aspects under the rights approach:
Efficacy
Efficiency
What Do We Mean by Education Quality?
A broad concept of quality education:
Pertinence
Relevance
Quality
Education
Efficacy
•Diversity and flexibility
• Curriculum
• Regulation
• Classroom practices/assessment analysis
Rights, 4 pillars, meanings
• Curriculum
• Regulation
• Practices/assessment
Objective achievement, curriculum management
• Access
• Completion
• Students academic achievement
• Teachers (who are they, conditions, practices)
• Climate
Efficiency
Finance, resources management, social
responsibility
• Management, participation
• Availability/use of resources
Equity
Inclusion, equal opportunities, resources
• Achievement parity (efficacy)
• Tendencies
• Alternative education/positive discrimination
Beyond 2015 –
Where do we go from here?
 Rethinking quality of education:




how do the various aspects of quality relate to each other?
Pedagogical methods,
assessment of and for learning,
21st century skills, etc.
 Education convergence in LAC
 Creating a suite of education quality indicators
 Need to asses and understand the impact of
education in mitigating inequity
 Teachers are key
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Thank you
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