The fight is on to preserve a key education indicator to measure reading and math levels among early-grade school children, which may be dropped from the Sustainable Development Goal monitoring framework due to low reporting levels.
Tensions are running high within the global education community as different players weigh in on how to preserve SDG 4.1.1a — which focuses on the proportion of children in grades two and three “achieving at least a minimum proficiency level” in reading and mathematics, by sex — which is set to be deleted from the SDG monitoring framework next year unless more countries start providing data.
The decision to downgrade SDG 4.1.1a was announced during an October meeting of the United Nations Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators, sending shockwaves through the global education community amid fears that important progress in improving foundational learning will be lost.
About the author
Sophie Edwards
Sophie Edwards is a Devex Contributing Reporter covering global education, water and sanitation, and innovative financing, along with other topics. She has previously worked for NGOs, and the World Bank, and spent a number of years as a journalist for a regional newspaper in the U.K. She has a master's degree from the Institute of Development Studies and a bachelor's from Cambridge University.
