Global Citizenship Education and the Post
2015 agenda
Development Education and the MDGs –
Successes and failures, lessons learned and applied to the post-2015 agenda
Frank Geary
IDEA – Irish Development Education Association

• MDG 2
• Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
• Development Education does not feature in the MDGs
• MDGs as a tool of Development Education?

Lesson learned from the MDGs :
• Inclusion of qualitative aspects
• Inclusion of Education for Global Citizenship (EGC)
Lesson learned from Development Education:
• Universality as a central to global justice and tackling global issues– local to global interconnections

How can we apply these lessons to the post-2015
Sustainable Development Goals?
• Universality must be a central principal for the post 2015 goals
• Global Education First Initiative, the UN Secretary General’s
Global Initiative on Education
• Priority 1: Put Every Child in School = Education for All
• Priority 2: Improve the Quality of Learning = Quality Education for All
• Priority 3: Foster Global Citizenship = Education for Global Citizenship

• Priority 3: Foster Global Citizenship
The world faces global challenges, which require global solutions. These interconnected global challenges call for far-reaching changes in how we think and act for the dignity of fellow human beings. It is not enough for education to produce individuals who can read, write and count. Education must be transformative and bring shared values to life. It must cultivate an active care for the world and for those with whom we share it. Education must also be relevant in answering the big questions of the day.
Technological solutions, political regulation or financial instruments alone cannot achieve sustainable development. It requires transforming the way people think and act. Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies. It must give people the understanding, skills and values they need to cooperate in resolving the interconnected challenges of the 21st Century.

How can the post-2015 Sustainable Development
Goals reflect Education for Global Citizenship and
Development Education?
• Include an Education for Global Citizenship TARGET in the new Sustainable Development Goals.
• How this target has been articulated.
• DEEEP and the Brussels Proposal
• UNESCO and the Muscat Agreement
• Other umbrellas eg. Education for Sustainable
Development

• The concept of EGC
EGC is integral to quality education, enabling learners to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes that can support them being active and responsible, global citizens. EGC is grounded in a rightsbased approach to education, utilises learner-centred participatory pedagogy (including peer-to-peer and lifelong learning), and concerns all education stakeholders across sectors. EGC should be embedded within all subjects, across learning environments and integrated into all education pathways (formal, non-formal and informal education). EGC should also be developed to suit local contexts. EGC is based on an understanding of the purpose of education as going beyond the acquisition of knowledge and cognitive skills, to transforming the way people think and act individually and collectively.

• The EGC Target
Muscat Agreement
Target 5: By 2030, all learners acquire knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to establish sustainable and peaceful societies, including through global citizenship education and education for sustainable development.
Brussels Proposal
With regards to implementing the Target once it is adopted in the 2015
Framework, we consider it important that the following elements are considered:
Our societies should also be equitable, resilient and inclusive, and secondly, we consider it important that EGC is included both in formal and non-formaleducation as well as informal learning.

Collective call to action
An ambitious and achievable target for EGC is an important step to assure an actual shift in quality education. The value of EGC in education and society is recognised through the agreement of a target in the post-2015 framework.
We commit to working to achieve the target by further developing our pedagogy and educational practice, by monitoring the progress towards meeting the EGC target and the post-2015 education goal more broadly, and by holding all actors to account to ensure proper financing and resources for
EGC everywhere. We will engage multiple actors in a collaborative and participatory way to ensure education targets enhance responsible citizenship within local and global contexts.
We call on the United Nations, national governments and others to work together and ensure that EGC is included in the post-2015 framework.

• 2 aspects of the post 2015 process that must compliment each other, and that both must take place
• Political process – Beyond 2015
• Popular process – a process of development education and mobilisation – Action/2015
• Education for Global Citizenship requires both, and has a role to play in both.

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