4 SDG 4:
QUALITY
EDUCATION
By: Chanchal Soni (00106142019)
B. Arch, 5th Semester
Subject: BAP 315 Sustainable Development
GOAL 4: QUALITY EDUCATION
ENSURE INCLUSIVE AND EQUITABLE QUALITY EDUCATION AND
PROMOTE LIFELONG LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL
• Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a
key to escaping poverty. Over the past decade, major
progress was made towards increasing access to education
and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly for
girls. Nevertheless, about 260 million children were still
out of school in 2018 — nearly one fifth of the global
population in that age group. And more than half of all
children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting
minimum proficiency standards in reading and
mathematics.
• In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the
globe, a majority of countries announced the temporary
closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of
students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion
children and youth were out of school. And nearly 369
million children who rely on school meals needed to look
to other sources for daily nutrition.
• Never before have so many children been out of school at
the same time, disrupting learning and upending lives,
especially the most vulnerable and marginalized. The
global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that may
jeopardize hard won gains made in improving global
education. 2
WHY IS IT
4 IMPORTANT?
Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility
and is a key to escaping poverty. Education helps
reduce inequalities and reach gender equality and is
crucial to fostering tolerance and more peaceful
societies. Over the past decade, major progress has
been made towards increasing access to education
and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly
for girls. Nevertheless, about 258 million children
and youth were still out of school in 2018 — nearly
one fifth of the global population in that age group.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe,
countries announced the temporary closure of
schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students
worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion
children and youth were out of school.
What challenges remain?
Despite years of steady growth in enrolment rates, non-proficiency rates remain disturbingly high. In 2018, some 773
million adults—two thirds of whom are women—remained illiterate in terms of reading and writing skills. And the
sheer magnitude of school closures due to COVID-19 is likely to set back progress on access to education.
Where are people struggling the most to have access to
education?
Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at
the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to
drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet. Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap
between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed.
Are there groups that have a more difficult access to
education?
Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About one-third of countries in the developing regions have not achieved
gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and
limited opportunities in the labor market for young women.
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TARGETS 4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and
skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among
others, through education for sustainable development and
sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a
culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and
4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to
and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and sustainable development
Goal-4 effective learning outcomes
4.A Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability
4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and
early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that effective learning environments for all
they are ready for primary education
4.B By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of
4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least
affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, developed countries, small island developing States and African
including university countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational
4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults training and information and communications technology, technical,
who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, engineering and scientific programs, in developed countries and
for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship other developing countries
4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure 4.C By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers,
equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the including through international cooperation for teacher training in
vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples developing countries, especially least developed countries and small
and children in vulnerable situations island developing states
4.6 By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of
adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy
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INDICATORS 4.6.1 Percentage of population in a given age group achieving at
least a fixed level of proficiency in functional (a) literacy and
(b) numeracy skills, by sex
4.7.1 Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii)
4.1.1 Proportion of children and young people: (a) in grades education for sustainable development, including gender
2/3; (b) at the end of primary; and (c) at the end of lower equality and human rights, are mainstreamed at all levels in: (a)
secondary achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c) teacher education
reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex and (d) student assessment
4.2.1 Proportion of children under 5 years of age who are 4.a.1 Proportion of schools with access to: (a) electricity; (b) the
developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial Internet for pedagogical purposes; (c) computers for
well-being, by sex pedagogical purposes; (d) adapted infrastructure and materials
for students with disabilities; (e) basic drinking water; (f)
4.2.2 Participation rate in organized learning (one year before single-sex basic sanitation facilities; and (g) basic handwashing
the official primary entry age), by sex facilities (as per the WASH indicator definitions)
4.3.1 Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non- 4.b.1 Volume of official development assistance flows for
formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex scholarships by sector and type of study
4.4.1 Proportion of youth and adults with information and
4.c.1 Proportion of teachers in: (a) pre-primary; (b) primary; (c)
communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill lower secondary; and (d) upper secondary education who have
4.5.1 Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top received at least the minimum organized teacher training (e.g.
wealth quintile and others such as disability status, indigenous pedagogical training) pre-service or in-service required for
peoples and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all teaching at the relevant level in a given country
education indicators on this list that can be disaggregated
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MAJOR NGOs WORKING
• Encourages the growth, development • Focuses on literacy and gender
and distribution of free, multilingual, equality in education and works with
educational content, and provides the communities and local governments
full content of these wiki-based across Asia and Africa to develop
projects to the public free of charge. literacy skills and a habit of reading
among primary school children.
• Contributes to literacy worldwide by Supports girls to complete secondary
innovating and implementing simple, school with the life skills they’ll need
scalable, and cost-effective solutions, to succeed in school and beyond.
especially using mass media and
information technologies. • Works to improve the quality of
education in India. As one of the
• Demystifies technologies and largest non-governmental
decentralizes their uses by transferring organizations in the country, Pratham
the access, control, management and focuses on high-quality, low-cost, and
ownership of sophisticated replicable interventions to address
technologies to rural men and women gaps in the education system.
who can barely read and write.
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HOW MUCH
4 PROGRESS HAVE
WE MADE SO FAR?
The primary school completion rate reached 84 per
cent in 2018, up from 70 per cent in 2000 and under
current trends, is expected to reach 89 per cent
globally by 2030. In 74 countries with comparable
data for the period 2011-2019, around seven in ten
children aged three and four were developmentally
on track in at least three of the following domains:
literacy-numeracy, physical development, social-
emotional development and learning. The global
adult literacy rate (aged 15 years and older) was 86
per cent in 2018, while the youth literacy rate (15 to
24 years) was 92 per cent.
SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
COVID-19 has wreaked havoc worldwide on
children’s learning and well-being. Before the
pandemic, progress in education was already too
slow to achieve Goal 4 by 2030. One year into the
crisis, two in three students were still affected by
full or partial school closures. One hundred
million more children than before fail to
demonstrate basic reading skills. The poorest and
most vulnerable children are bearing the brunt of
the crisis, exacerbating longstanding inequalities.
Many risk never returning to school; some are
forced into child marriage or child labour. Special
efforts are required to recover learning losses
caused by COVID-19. H
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SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
Exceptional measures are needed to get students back on track after
a catastrophic year for education
Even before COVID-19, the world was not on
track to meet reading and mathematics targets. In
2019, only 59 per cent of children in grade three
were proficient in reading. The pandemic is
projected to cause an additional 101 million
children (roughly 9 per cent of those in primary
and lower secondary school) to fall below the
minimum reading proficiency threshold,
increasing the total number of students falling
behind to 584 million in 2020. This wipes out the
progress achieved in education over the past 20
years. Similar declines are observed in the area of
mathematics.
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SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
Large disparities in school completion are likely to get worse,
especially among poor or vulnerable children
Progress to ensure that all children complete
primary and secondary school has been slow.
Between 2010 and 2019, the global primary and
secondary school completion rates increased from
82 per cent to 85 per cent and from 46 per cent to
53 per cent, respectively. In sub-Saharan Africa,
the primary completion rate rose from 57 per cent
in 2010 to 64 per cent in 2019, while the
secondary rate grew from 26 per cent to 29 per
cent, leaving that region furthest behind. Large
disparities among population groups remain
pervasive. Almost half of countries with data did
not reach gender parity in primary school
completion
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SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
Good progress in early childhood education has been brought
to a halt by the pandemic
Pre-COVID-19 data for 2012–2020 drawn from
76 mostly low- and middle-income countries and
territories show that around 7 in 10 children aged
3 and 4 years are developmentally on track.
Participation in organized pre-primary learning
(one year before the official age for primary
school entry) rose steadily before the pandemic,
from 65 per cent in 2010 to 73 per cent in 2019,
with gender parity achieved in every region.
However, considerable variation was found among
regions. Participation in early learning in 2019
was 43 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, compared
with 96 per cent in Latin American and the
Caribbean. This progress has been threatened
since 2020, since childcare and early education
facilities have closed in most countries.
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SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
Broader participation in continuing education and training is
needed to create resilient and adaptable workers
Continuing education and training are key to
improved livelihoods and to developing a labor
force resilient to economic shocks and adaptable
to technological change. Prior to the pandemic, the
average participation rate of youth and adults in
formal and non-formal education was only 25 per
cent, with significant variation across the 73
countries with data. In nearly half of them,
participation rates were below 10 per cent, but
were 40 per cent and above among countries in
Europe and Northern America. Gender parity in
participation rates was achieved in less than a fifth
of the countries.
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SDG REPORT 2021 - GOAL 4
Building back better from the crisis can start with basic school
infrastructure, which is sorely lacking in many countries
Improving basic school infrastructure is critical for
school reopening, a first step on the road to
recovery from COVID-19. Data from 2016 to
2019 show that, globally, more than a fifth of
primary schools lacked access to basic drinking
water or single-sex toilets, more than a third
lacked basic handwashing facilities, and one in
four did not have electricity. Internet service and
computers in schools are even more scarce.
Schools in LDCs face the biggest challenges.
Almost half of primary schools in LDCs lack
single-sex toilets – an important factor in girls’
attendance – and more than two thirds are without
electricity. The pandemic is spotlighting the
importance of adequate sanitation facilities in
keeping children safe at school and the need for
ICT infrastructure to support remote learning.
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THANK YOU!
REFERENCES
• quick-guide-education-indicators-sdg4-2018-en.pdf (unesco.org)
• https://unric.org/en/sdg-4/
• https://sdgcompass.org/sdgs/sdg-4/
• Goal 4 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org)
• Sustainable Development Report 2021 - Sustainable Development R
eport
