Latvia Participates in the 2021 UNESCO Global Education Meeting on Crisis Experience and International Cooperation in Education

The 2021 UNESCO Global Education Meeting (GEM 2021) took place this week to assess how global cooperation in education can contribute to progress towards achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education by 2030 (SDG4). The meeting endorsed a proposal to improve UNESCO’s Global Coordination Mechanism for Education in order to strengthen international solidarity and mobilise knowledge and resources for the recovery of education from the COVID crisis.

Opening the event, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay highlighted the inequalities caused by the crisis between the world’s developed countries and low- and middle-income countries in ensuring quality, equitable and digitally accessible education. Major challenges include the lack of a strategic approach and insufficient funding for the digitalisation of education, the inadequate availability of vaccine doses—particularly for vaccinating teachers, which is necessary to ensure the continuity of education—and unequal access to education from a gender-equality perspective. The UNESCO Director-General identified three areas of action in which international efforts need to be concentrated:

• Collect and share higher-quality data, which form the foundation of education policies. A new UNESCO framework for assessing regional and national progress towards SDG4 is being prepared;
• Invest more and more intelligently in education by implementing the commitment expressed in the 2020 Ministerial Declaration to allocate at least 15–20% of public expenditure to education;
• Strengthen international cooperation in education, making it more effective, dynamic and focused on common priorities.

The event was substantively based on a joint study by UNESCO, UNICEF, the OECD and the World Bank on national responses to the challenges posed by COVID-19 in education in 142 countries. Presenting the study’s findings in greater detail, UNICEF Director of Education Robert Jenkins highlighted, as one of the lessons of the crisis, the need to provide effective support measures for both learners and teachers so that distance learning produces results.  Andreas Schleicher, Head of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, pointed to the lack of effective coordination between different sectors and insufficient resources for safely reopening schools and complying with health requirements. The OECD representative identified the negative impact on learners’ social and psycho-emotional well-being as a long-term challenge of the crisis—one that will be much more difficult to overcome than learning losses.

Latvian Minister of Education and Science Anita Muižniece, who participated in the UNESCO Round Table Discussion of Ministers of Member States, also pointed to learners’ psycho-emotional well-being and mental health as a global problem with long-term consequences. Looking back at education priorities in Latvia during the COVID-19 crisis, the Latvian Minister of Education drew attention to a deeper problem: 63% of young people in Latvia acknowledged the negative impact of the crisis on their mental health. Latvia is therefore implementing a significant nationwide initiative to promote peer-to-peer learning and psycho-emotional support among young people, as well as active civic participation in the renewal of society. Expressing gratitude to UNESCO for preparing the proposal, the Latvian Minister of Education called for strengthening the presence of youth in the global architecture of cooperation in education. The Minister also emphasised the importance of cooperation mechanisms at the national level in promoting global progress towards achieving SDG4.

The GEM 2021 Outcome Document—the UNESCO proposal for improving the SDG4 Global Coordination Mechanism (GCM)—was developed by a UNESCO Working Group specially established for this purpose, following the call expressed in the 2020 Ministerial Declaration. As UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini noted, every one of the 700 million learners worldwide who still do not attend school fully or partially is exposed to the risks of learning loss, dropout, threats to health and poverty. The pandemic has created a need for a global cooperation mechanism in education that fits within the post-COVID-19 context and ensures improvements at the national level, reaching every child and young person. The improved GCM is designed to enable more effective cooperation among all international stakeholders and accelerate progress towards SDG4 as a universal and comprehensive goal of ensuring everyone’s right to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities. Overseen at the political level, the GCM will operate as a knowledge hub, mobilising international knowledge, data and experience, identifying barriers to achieving SDG4 indicators, providing countries with recommendations for formulating evidence-based education policies, and monitoring their implementation at national and regional levels. It will also serve as a support platform for implementing nationwide initiatives and mobilising and effectively using education funding. The new GCM is expected to be approved at the High-Level GEM Session of the UNESCO General Conference in November 2021.

More information - https://www.izm.gov.lv/lv/jaunums/latvija-piedalas-unesco-globalaja-izglitibas-sanaksme-2021-par-krizes-pieredzi-un-starptautisko-sadarbibu-izglitiba

Author:

Ministry of Education and Science

izm.gov.lv