UNESCO Institute for Statistics

This grant to UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics will support the next phase of the Learning Metrics Task Force, so that its recommendations at the U.N. General Assembly in September 2013 can be put into action. The Institute for Statistics will focus on developing technical frameworks and ensuring that the data required to produce learning indicators are available and reliable. Through its multicountry Observatory of Learning Outcomes, it will disseminate these tools. The Institute for Statistics will work in collaboration with education experts and the World Bank, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, the Global Partnership for Education, and other partners.

This grant will allow the UNESCO Institute for Statistics to continue and deepen work begun under the Learning Metrics Task Force. The Institute will build consensus and lead technical work to define learning indicators that are expected to be adopted for tracking the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals related to education. It will also expand its mapping of national assessments, including alternative and citizen-generated learning assessments, and develop and disseminate quality standards.

As the lead United Nations agency for education, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics will co-host the Learning Metrics Task Force along with the Brookings Institution. In addition to supporting the efforts of the Learning Metrics Task Force to promote and define learning goals for post-2015 development frameworks, this grant would support the Institute in consulting countries around the world on the proposed learning goals and exploring how to better collect comparable learning indicators across countries. These efforts would strengthen UNESCO’s voice in the post-2015 education and development discussions and provide guidance for countries to examine their progress on the current education goals in the lead-up to 2015. Such guidance from UNESCO would help ensure that countries not only report on the gains made in school access, but also measure and prioritize progress made on student learning.