NEW GLOBAL INITIATIVES Susan Durston Associate Director, Education, UNICEF UNGEI GAC Meeting May 2012

New: SG’s Initiative This initiative has 3 bold priority areas: – To put every child in school by providing free basic education; – Ensure that there are quality outcomes by filling the teacher gap, enhancing youth learning and skills development and Innovation; and – Foster global citizenship by making education more relevant and responsive to contemporary and emerging challenges. UNICEF is on this Steering Committee and linking to this launch in September 2012 a high level technical panel on learning in a coalition of UNICEF, Hewlett Foundation, Brookings and UNESCO as the start of a pulsed high level advocacy push Global Partnerships-Secretary-General’s Initiative

New: The Global Compact on Learning A global, multi-partner effort facilitated by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings providing a policy agenda and series of concrete steps for various actors to take to advance learning for all girls and boys in low-income countries; to support a paradigm shift in the global education agenda from access alone to access plus learning; The established Global Compact on Learning Metrics Task Force aims to catalyze a shared vision for common goals and targets in the education sector and inform the post-2015 global policy discourse; streamline data collection and improve country level learning assessments; UNICEF (Geeta Rao Gupta) one of three co-chairs Issues: narrow focus on reading; doubt about global learning metric. Global Partnerships-Global Compact on Learning

Learning Metrics Task Force What current efforts exist to compare learning standards across countries? Can learning standards be the same across all countries or only country-specific? What process should be used to develop global learning standards? What (if any) minimum standards can be agreed upon for global learning measurement