Convened by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, the summit is scheduled for 19 September 2022, at the outset of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Mr. Sengeh and the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed co-chair the Summit Advisory Committee.
Preceding the summit, events on Mobilization and Solutions on Friday 16 and Saturday 17 September, respectively, will help anchor one of the biggest-ever gatherings of world leaders on education.
“It is a moment that is bringing us all together — world leaders, civil society, students, young people—to reimagine education, to think about how we address our greatest challenges through education,” Mr. Sengeh tells Africa Renewal.
At a pre-summit in Paris last June, Mr. Guterres identified three crises facing many education systems: these are equity, quality and relevance: –
On equity, 258 million children, the majority girls, are out of school;
On quality, half of 10-year-old students in low and middle-income countries cannot read basic text; and
On relevance, current education systems are outdated.
The health and the learning crises are something the world should not joke with.
Meeting SDG targets off track
Mr. Guterres is also concerned that countries may not meet the targets for SDG 4, which is to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
Based on “assessments of their [countries] commitments to SDG 4, by their own benchmarks, we are not going to meet the targets,” Mr. Sengeh maintains, adding that Mr. Guterres decided “to invite world leaders to say to them, ‘look, hold on a minute: something needs to happen differently.’”
Progress toward SDG 4 is “badly off track,” echoes a conceptual framework for the event, and mentions that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the crisis.
The pandemic’s impact on learning has been severe. While global lockdowns severely affected economies, healthcare systems, lives and livelihoods, Mr. Sengeh says a stiff challenge, which was not anticipated, was a learning crisis.
“At its peak, about 1.2 billion – 1.6 billion children were out of school globally. For some countries, it took up to two years to return to school,” he laments. “What used to happen [in education] is no longer working for most people.”
Education in Africa
What is happening to education in Africa is best told through many grim statistics. Some 100 million children are out of school on the continent, the highest level ever. And girls are 10 per cent less likely to complete lower secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa.
While 1 in 5 children and adolescents of primary and secondary school age live in sub-Saharan Africa, the region is home to a third of those who cannot read.
UNICEF reports that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 80 per cent of African children in school could neither read, understand or respond to questions related to a 150-word piece, which they should do by age 10. That figure is likely higher because of the pandemic.
“It is a double whammy for kids,” Mr. Sengeh says. “The health and the learning crises are something the world should not joke with.”
Momentum for the summit began earlier in the year with consultations in about 100 countries on commitments to transform education, public engagement, and how countries’ actions could roll along five tracks.
Source link : https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2022/transforming-education-summit-2022-global-mobilisation-save-education
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Publish date : 2022-09-07 07:00:00
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