Urging Support for Education Summit, Deputy Secretary-General Tells Global Forum Schools Struggle to Equip Learners with Skills Needed in Fast-Changing World
(Delayed for technical reasons)
Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the Global Education Forum, in New York on 20 April:
It is my pleasure to join you for this meeting of the Global Education Forum. We meet at a moment when across the world, education is at a crossroads. In many contexts, it is in deep crisis. COVID-19, climate change and political and economic crises are compounding a pre-existing learning crisis that has left the education-related Sustainable Development Goals badly off-track.
Over the last two years, pandemic-related interruption alone threatens to significantly increase the number of children and youth out of school, and to further undermine already poor outcomes on foundational learning.
What’s more, last year’s seminal report from the International Commission on the Futures of Education reiterated something that young people have been telling us for some time now: namely, that contemporary education systems are struggling to equip learners with the skills, knowledge and values needed to compete and thrive in our rapidly changing world.
This crisis in education — one of both equity and relevance — has dramatic implications for the futures of hundreds of millions of children and young people. It is also having a profound effect on our collective ability to steer our world towards the breakthrough that is needed to secure a better future for all.
It is against this backdrop that the Secretary-General decided to convene the Transforming Education Summit this September and I wish to thank Gordon and the Forum’s Co-Chairs for making it a key focus of your meeting today.
The Summit’s positioning as one of the first initiatives to emerge from Our Common Agenda is a reflection of the value that the Secretary-General places on education as cornerstone of a new social contract and of his deep concern with our current education trajectories.
In this context, the Summit has two interdependent aims: first, to generate a surge in political commitment to education as a pre-eminent public good. And second, to mobilize the action, ambition and solutions and solidarity needed to reimagine education.
This is the only way that we can respond to the educational needs of the day — to recover pandemic-related learning losses, to accelerate Sustainable Development Goals progress and to better preparing societies for an uncertain future.
Summit preparations are gaining momentum and are being advanced across three independent workstreams. Inclusive national consultations are underway and aim to facilitate the emergence of a new national commitment to transform education across the world. Thematic action tracks at the global level provide specificity to identify both evidence-based solutions and the common elements for transformation around which all countries and stakeholders can all rally in the years ahead.
Finally, a series of actions are being planned to strengthen public engagement and support for the kind of reimagining of education that is so urgently needed. I therefore welcome the Investment Case for Education that you are discussing today, and I encourage all of you to actively engage in the Summit preparatory process.
I welcome in particular the substantive focus on issues that resonate very clearly with the thematic focus of the Summit: the need to nurture a healthier, safer and more inclusive school environment; the need to rethink curricula and pedagogy to better respond to twenty-first century challenges; the need to support the teaching profession to evolve to be fit for the future; the need to responsibly steer the digital transformation of education that is moving forward apace; and of course, the need to identify new and better ways for mobilize effective investment in education — both domestic and international.
As you look at these details in further detail today, I urge you to reflect on the contribution that inclusive, effective and networked multilateralism can make to support developing countries in their pursuit of education transformation.
In the past, international cooperation in the area of education has struggled to become more than the sum of its parts — undermined by fragmentation, competition, financing deficits and an inability to mobilize the full ecosystem of potential actors. The Summit provides an opportunity to further address such challenges in the sector, building on encouraging efforts of late including the establishment of the Global Education Cooperation Mechanism.
The Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Summit, Leonardo Garnier, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Assistant Director General Giannini will expand further on this shortly, but allow me to comment briefly on three specific issues that are before you today.
First, there is an urgent need to strengthen alignment of effort and supercharge both implementation and accountability at the country level — and the United Nations development system is ready to step up its contribution in this regard. I therefore welcome the emphasis on a new education compact between national Governments and their international partners. National commitments to transform education to be presented by Heads of State at the Summit could provide a foundation for such a compact into the future.
Second, I welcome proposals for securing a sea-change in the availability of effective financing for education — which can feed into the Summit Action Track on Financing. Financing gaps in education are growing and the economic and fiscal context for many developing countries is of utmost concern. Efficient mobilization and use of domestic resources is essential to any effective national education system.
But, in some contexts, international financing for education still plays a critical role. I therefore reiterate the Secretary-General’s call to operationalize innovative tools such as the International Financing Facility for Education in advance of the Summit. And I encourage the Global Education Forum members to continue to look at additional ways to mobilize all other possible resources for education.
Third, the availability and affordability of high-quality educational resources has become increasingly urgent — both in light of the shift to digital learning, but also given the need to upgrade our curricula and teaching. Here, too, there is ample scope for inclusive multilateralism to play a much more effective role.
The success of the Transforming Education Summit depends on the actions of all who are committed to education. It depends on all of you. I urge members of the Global Education Forum to work together over the next six months to seize this opportunity to generate new momentum and solidarity to transform education now and into the future. Thank you.