NEW GLOBAL INITIATIVES

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

2. Global Partnerships-Secretary-General’s Initiative 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 bymaking 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

3. Global Partnerships-Global Compact on Learning New:The Global Compact on Learning Aglobal, 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.

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