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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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