Tag: Culture and education

New report — Global Issues

The ability of education systems to ensure even rudimentary literacy skills for their students has declined in four out of 10 African countries over the last three decades.

 The findings are published in the first of a three-part series of Spotlight reports on foundational learning in Africa, called Born to Learn, published by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report at UNESCO, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the African Union.

Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report, said while every child is born to learn, they can’t do so if they’re hungry, lack textbooks, or don’t speak the language they’re being taught in.

Lack of basic support for teachers is another key factor.

Lessons for all

“Every country needs to learn too, ideally from its peers”, added Mr. Antoninis. “We hope this Spotlight report will guide ministries to make a clear plan to improve learning, setting a vision for change, working closely with teachers and school leaders, and making more effective use of external resources”.  

The report includes data from accompanying country reports developed in partnership with ministries of education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal and a series of other case studies on the continent.

“Africa has a complex past that has left parts of it with linguistic fragmentation, conflict, poverty and malnutrition that have weighed heavily on the education systems’ ability to ensure universal primary completion and foundational learning”, said Albert Nsengiyumva, the Executive Secretary of ADEA.

New opportunity

“Our partnership is shining a spotlight on this issue together with education ministries to help find solutions that work. The social and economic consequences of low learning outcomes are devastating for Africa. This report’s findings give us the chance to find a new way forward, learning from each other”.

The report finds that, in addition to socioeconomic challenges, the limited availability of good quality textbooks, lack of proper teacher support, inadequate teacher training and provision of teacher guides, were a bar to progress across sub-Saharan Africa.

© UNICEF/Vincent Tremeau

Students attend class at a school in Kaya, Burkina Faso.

Hopeful signs

Recent interventions show progress is possible, if efforts are focused on classroom practices that are evidence based.

Positive practices highlighted in the report and other experiences will be fed into a peer-learning mechanism on foundational learning, hosted by the AU that has been launched alongside the eport, the Leveraging Education Analysis for Results Network (LEARN), building on the Continental Education Strategy for Africa clusters.

Mohammed Belhocine, African Union Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation said the COVID-19 pandemic had thwarted efforts to ensure all children have fundamental skills in reading and maths.

“This is why a focus on basic education within our continental strategy’s policy dialogue platform is warranted. The work of the new LEARN network on basic education within the AU launched this week will draw from the experiences of countries that have taken part in the Spotlight report series”. 

Key recommendations:

  1. Give all children a textbook: Ensure all children have learning materials, which are research-based and locally developed. Having their own textbook can increase a child’s literacy scores by up to 20%.  Senegal’s Lecture pour tous project ensured textbooks were high quality. Benin is celebrated for its system-wide curriculum and textbook reform that has provided more explicit and direct instruction for teachers.
  2. Teach all children in their home language: Give all children the opportunity to learn to read in the language they understand. In 16 out of 22 countries, at most, one third of students are taught in their home language. Mozambique’s recent expansion of bilingual education covers around a quarter of primary schools, with children learning under the new approach achieving outcomes 15 per cent higher than those learning in one language.  
  3. Provide all children with a school meal: Give all children the minimum conditions to learn: zero hungry pupils in school. Today, only one in three primary school students in Africa receive a school meal. Rwanda has committed to deliver school meals to all children from pre-primary to lower secondary education, covering 40 per cent of costs.
  4. Make a clear plan to improve learning: Define learning standards, set targets and monitor outcomes to inform the national vision. There is no information on the learning levels of two-thirds of children across the region. This represents 140 million students.  The Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project, is working on a framework for learning accountability.
  5. Develop teacher capacity: Ensure all teachers use classroom time effectively through training and teacher guides. A recent study covering 13 countries, 8 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, found that projects with teacher guides significantly increased reading fluency.  
  6. Prepare teacher-leaders: Restructure support mechanisms offered to teachers and schools. The Let’s read programme in Kenya, which combined school support and monitoring with effective leadership has seen improvements equivalent to one additional year of schooling for children. 
  7. Learn from peers: Reinvigorate mechanisms for countries to share experiences on foundational literacy and numeracy.  
  8. Focus aid on institution building: Shift from projects to provision of public goods that support foundational learning 

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Time to get off the couch, WHO warns, as 500 million risk developing chronic illness — Global Issues

And the price of inaction and staying on the couch, will be severe, WHO said – around $27 billion in extra healthcare costs.

The Global status report on physical activity 2022, measures the extent to which governments are implementing recommendations to increase physical activity across all ages and abilities. 

Data from 194 countries show that overall, progress is slow and that countries need to accelerate the development and implementation of policies to increase heart rates and help prevent disease and reduce the burden on already overwhelmed health services.

Unsplash/Adrian Swancar

More than 80% of the world’s adolescent population is insufficiently physically active

The statistics lay bare the extent of the challenges facing countries worldwide: 

  • Less than 50 per cent of countries have a national physical activity policy, of which less than 40 per cent are operational.
  • Only 30 per cent of countries have national physical activity guidelines for all ages.
  • While nearly all countries report a system for monitoring adult exercise, only 75 per cent of countries monitor adolescent activity, and less than 30 per cent monitor physical activity in children under 5.
  • In transport policy terms, just over 40 per cent of countries have road design standards that make walking and cycling safer.

Time to take a walk: Tedros  

“We need more countries to scale up implementation of policies to support people to be more active through walking, cycling, sport, and other physical activity”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

“The benefits are huge, not only for the physical and mental health of individuals, but also for societies, environments, and economies…We hope countries and partners will use this report to build more active, healthier, and fairer societies for all.”  

The economic burden of taking it too easy is significant, says the WHO report, and the cost of treating new cases of preventable non-communicable diseases (NCDs) will reach nearly $300 billion by 2030.

Whilst national policies to tackle NCDs and physical inactivity have increased in recent years, currently 28 per cent of policies are reported to be not funded or implemented.

There is much to be said for countries running a national PR campaign, or mass participation events, that extoll the benefits of getting more exercise, said WHO.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only stalled these initiatives, but it also affected other policy implementation which has widened inequities when it comes to upping the heart rate in many communities.

Unsplash/Chander R

Physical activity reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Fitness plan

To help countries increase physical activity, WHO’s Global action plan on physical activity 2018-2030 (GAPPA) sets out 20 policy recommendations.

These include safer roads to encourage more biking and walking, and providing more programmes and opportunities for physical activity in key settings, such as childcare, schools, primary health care and the workplace.

“We are missing globally approved indicators to measure access to parks, cycle lanes, foot paths – even though we know that data do exist in some countries”, said Fiona Bull, Head of WHO’s Physical Activity Unit.

“Consequently, we cannot report or track the global provision of infrastructure that will facilitate increases in physical activity”.

“It can be a vicious circle, no indicator and no data leads to no tracking and no accountability, and then too often, to no policy and no investment. What gets measured gets done, and we have some way to go to comprehensively and robustly track national actions on physical activity.”

National workout

The report calls for countries to prioritize a fitness boost, as key to improving health and tackling NCDs, integrate physical activity into all relevant policies, and develop tools, guidance and training.

“It is good for public health and makes economic sense to promote more physical activity for everyone,” said Dr. Ruediger Krech, WHO Director in the Department of Health Promotion.

“We need to facilitate inclusive programmes for physical activity for all and ensure people have easier access to them.  This report issues a clear call to all countries for stronger and accelerated action by all relevant stakeholders working better together to achieve the global target of a 15% reduction in the prevalence of physical inactivity by 2030.” 

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World Teachers’ Day highlights need to transform education — Global Issues

The statement comes in their joint message to mark World Teachers’ Day, celebrated annually on 5 October.

The international community has committed to transform education – a process that must be led by teachers.

A critical partner

That’s the firm belief expressed by Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UN educational and cultural agency, UNESCO; Gilbert F. Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO); Catherine Russell, Executive Director at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and David Edwards, General Secretary of Education International.

“Today, on World Teachers’ Day, we celebrate the critical role of teachers in transforming learners’ potential by ensuring they have the tools they need to take responsibility for themselves, for others and for the planet,” they said.

“We call on countries to ensure that teachers are trusted and recognized as knowledge producers, reflective practitioners, and policy partners.”

Fulfill the promise

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that teachers are the engines at the heart of global education systems, the statement said. 

Without them, it is impossible to provide inclusive, equitable and quality education to every learner.  Teachers are also essential to pandemic recovery and preparing learners for the future.

“Yet unless we transform conditions for teachers, the promise of that education will remain out of reach for those who need it most,” the partners warned.

They recalled that the Transforming Education Summit, held last month at UN Headquarters, reaffirmed that transformation requires the right number of empowered, motivated and qualified teachers and education personnel in the right place with the right skills.

© UNICEF/ Zahara Abdul

Students participate in an Accelerated Education Programme at the Kashojwa Learning Center, Uganda.

Demotivated, dropping out

However, in many parts of the world, classrooms are overcrowded, they said, and teachers are too few, on top of being overworked, demotivated and unsupported. 

As a result, an unprecedented number are leaving the profession. There has also been a significant decline in people studying to become teachers.

“If these issues are not addressed, the loss of a professional teaching corps could be a fatal blow to the realization of Sustainable Development Goal 4,” they warned, referring to global efforts to ensure quality education for all, by 2030.

Furthermore, teacher loss disproportionately affects students in remote or poor areas, as well as women and girls, and vulnerable and marginalized populations.

Global shortage

The partners pointed to recent estimates which reveal an additional 24.4 million primary school teachers will be needed globally, along with some 44.4 million secondary education teachers, if the world is to achieve universal basic education by the end of the decade.

Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia alone will require 24 million more teachers, roughly half the number of new teachers needed in developing countries.

These regions have some of the most overcrowded classrooms in the world, and the most overburdened teachers and understaffed educational systems. A remarkable 90 per cent of their secondary schools face serious teaching shortages.

“Therefore, bringing qualified, supported and motivated teachers into classrooms – and keeping them there – is the single most important thing we can do to improve the learning and wellbeing of students and communities,” said the partners.

“The valuable work that teachers do must also be translated into better working conditions and pay.”

Education innovators awarded

Relatedly, three innovative programmes from Benin, Haiti and Lebanon have been recognized for their efforts to enhance the role of teachers and transform education, both in their communities and beyond.

These projects are the recipients of the 2022 UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development, which will be presented at a ceremony in Paris on Wednesday.

They are run by the Graines de Paix Foundation, the organization PH4 Global and the American University of Beirut, who will share a $300,000 endowment to help further their initiatives.

Promoting peace, preventing violence

Graines de Paix organizes a programme in Benin called Apprendre en paix, Enseigner sans violence (Learning in Peace, Education without Violence) that provides educational solutions focused on how to prevent all forms of violence and prevent radicalization.

The project also promotes well-being and a culture of peace, security, equity, and inclusion. Over 4,500 teachers have been trained, and more than 250,000 children reached.

Through its Training Teachers to Transform Haiti programme, P4H Global strives to improve the quality of education in the Caribbean country by training teachers as well as school directors, parents and community members.

Strategies for success

The objective is to transform teachers’ methods into effective student-centred strategies that cultivate critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. These are reinforced through measures that include personalized feedback via social media and messaging apps. 

More than 8,000 educators and 350,000 students across Haiti have benefited from the programme.

Under the TAMAM Project for School-Based Educational Reform, university researchers and educational practitioners in Lebanon work together to generate strategies grounded in the sociocultural contexts of the Arab region.

The initiative covers 70 schools in 10 countries in the region, and has benefited 1,000 educational partners, with 100 improvement projects initiated over the past 15 years.

About the Prize

The UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development was established in 2008 to support the improvement of teaching and learning quality in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

The prize, which is awarded every two years, is supported by the Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance.

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Guterres ‘deeply saddened’ by attack which left 15 dead — Global Issues

According to news reports, the gunman who was known to authorities and was a former pupil at the school Number 88, was wearing a Nazi swastika on his T-shirt during the attack, and Russian authorities are investigating the perpetrator’s suspected neo-Nazi links.

In a statement issued by his Deputy-Spokesperson, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, strongly condemned the “act of violence, and expresses his deepest condolences to the families of the victims, as well as to the Government and people of the Russian Federation. He wishes those injured a speedy and full recovery.”

News reports said that the attacker, who was in his early 30s, killed two security guards at the school then opened fire on students and teachers. All but two of those wounded were children. He had been armed with two pistols and a large supply of ammunition.

The school is located in western Russia, some 600 miles (965 kilometres) east of Moscow. Izvesk is the capital of the Udmurt Republic.  

‘Make schools safe’

The head of UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, tweeted that she was deeply shocked by the shooting of children and their teachers at the school.

“I strongly condemn this horrendous attack. Deepest condolences to (the) families of victims and the Russian people. We need immediate action to stop this senseless violence, and make schools safe.”

UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chief, Catherine Russell, tweeted later on Monday that “every child has the right to be safe in school, wherever they are and whatever their circumstances.”

The attacker had reportedly been registered with a local psychiatric facility.

There have been several school shootings in Russia in recent years including in the provincial capital of Kazan, in May 2021, when nine people were killed by a gunman – seven students and two employees – and last September, when six were killed and 47 injured, on a university campus, in the city of Perm.

In response to those incidents, the Russian Government reportedly tightened gun ownership laws.

 



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Forced out of school, but refusing to give up on education in Afghanistan — Global Issues

year after the Taliban takeover, 17-year-old Mursal Fasihi is still in disbelief that she cannot go back to school. Once a dedicated student, Ms. Fasihi – like all girls of secondary school age – has been unable to return to the classroom due to rules imposed by the country’s de facto leadership.

“It is not right that they are deciding for us, ordering us to go with mahram [a male companion], that we should hide our faces, and stop going to school,” she says, referring to the series of directives that have effectively restricted women and girls from participating in public life.

The last time Ms. Fasihi saw the inside of a school was when she took her final examination for 11th grade in July 2021. A month later, the Taliban swept across Afghanistan, which ended with the fall of Kabul on 15 August.

‘I miss my friends, my teachers and my school’

Some of her friends were able to leave Afghanistan and are now continuing their education overseas. “I really miss my friends, my teachers, and my school. My school was a great place but now I can’t go there,” she says.

Her dreams of becoming a doctor are now uncertain. But her hope will not be extinguished. To fill her time and still feel productive, Ms. Fasihi joined the Youth Peer Educators Network (Y-PEER), a regional initiative led by and for youth, supported by the UN reproductive health agency, UNFPA.

Y-PEER focuses on building young people’s life skills to deal with the challenges that they face. Ms. Fasihi joined a training session last July and is now one of the 25 trainers for Y-PEER in Afghanistan.

The training opened her eyes to various issues young Afghans face on a daily basis. As an educated young woman in the city of Kabul, she had not realized how many girls, especially young girls living in poverty or in remote areas, suffer from negative experiences such as early marriage and adolescent pregnancy.

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An unprecedented increase in poverty

The unprecedented increase in poverty, resulting from the economic crisis that came with the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, has brought to the fore discussions about these concerns. Out of desperation, many families have resorted to marrying off their young daughters, offloading responsibility for their care and protection.

“It is sad because how can a child bring another child into this world and raise them?” Ms. Fasihi points out. “At our age, we are just children. We should be studying, aiming for great things. It’s not time for us to get married yet.”

Waiting for the dark cloud to pass

Although Ms. Fasihi’s desire for a formal education is on hold indefinitely, she finds meaning and purpose in being a peer educator for others.

In addition to teaching youth about the harms of early marriage and adolescent pregnancy, she is able to share her hope for a better future.

“When the dark cloud passes, we will see a bright morning,” she told UNFPA.

“I hope that young girls will not give up. It is ok to be scared, it is ok to cry, but giving up is not an option. I hope they will continue learning in any way they can. Inshallah, maybe someone will help us, or the schools will reopen,” she said. “Our bright morning will come.”

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Colombia’s ‘dinosaur of peace’

Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement has led to an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a new species of dinosaur.

Read the full story, “Colombia’s ‘dinosaur of peace’”, on globalissues.org →

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Financing education, imperative for ‘peaceful, prosperous, stable societies’ – UN chief — Global Issues

Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking alongside his Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, drew attention to the critical issue of innovative financing for education.

He reminded that the “world is experiencing multiple crises”, and governments, businesses and families everywhere are feeling the financial strain.

Moreover, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, two-thirds of countries have cut their education budgets.

“But education is the building block for peaceful, prosperous, stable societies,” he stressed.

“Reducing investment virtually guarantees more serious crises further down the line”.

Education support needed ‘urgently’

The top UN official spelled out: “We need to get more, not less, money into education systems”.

He argued that while wealthy countries can increase funding from domestic sources, many developing nations are being hit by the cost-of-living crisis.

“They urgently need support for education,” Mr. Guterres attested.

Resource mechanism

He then spotlighted the role of the International Finance Facility for Education to get financing to lower-middle-income countries – home to 700 million children who are out of school – and to the majority of the world’s displaced and refugee children.

The UN chief told the media that the Facility is not a new fund, but a mechanism to increase the resources available to multilateral banks to provide low-cost education finance.

“In time, we expect it to grow into a $10 billion facility to educate tomorrow’s generation of young people,” he said.

“It will complement and work alongside existing tools, like the Global Partnership for Education, that provide grants and other assistance”.

UN News/Abdelmonem Makki

The Secretary-General congratulated his Special Envoy and all the countries and institutions involved in getting the facility off the ground.

“I urge all international donors and philanthropic organizations to back it,” he said.

Taking steps forward

Earlier today Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed opened Day 2 of the Summit, “Solutions day,” by recapping the need for education transformation; equity and inclusion; a rethink of the curricula and innovation in teaching.

“But loud and clear, we need more and better financing,” she stressed. “We can’t do this with fresh air, it has to be fueled”.

She described education as “a huge ecosystem” that supports many other lofty goals and called for “a sense of urgency” in scaling up projects.

“No more pilot projects, we know exactly what to do” she said. “It’s all about taking steps forward”.

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Building a future

The three-day Transforming Education Summit kicked off yesterday at UN Headquarters in New York.

It began with a day of youth-led mobilization, which included contributions from the Secretary-General, his deputy, and the President of the 77th General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi.

Tomorrow, the UN chief will introduce his vision statement, along with world leaders, in the General Assembly Hall, as the Summit comes to a close.

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A Resident Coordinator Blog — Global Issues

“When I was first appointed as United Nations Resident Coordinator two and a half years ago, it was clear to many that beyond the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the education system was managing complex and longstanding obstacles, including a highly decentralised education sector, outdated infrastructure, and decreasing numbers of students.

These obstacles were contributing to educational challenges across the country. For example, in 2018, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessment found that 15-year-old students from Bosnia and Herzegovina were well below the reading, mathematics, and science proficiency of the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) OECD average, even though there is relatively high spending per student relative to the country’s Gross Domestic Product. 

UNICEF BiH/Adnan Bubalo

Ingrid Macdonald, UN Resident Coordinator in Bosnia-Herzegovina

From crisis to opportunity

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the learning of more than 400,000 students across Bosnia and Herzegovina which brought these challenges to light. Yet, it also gave the UN a once-in-a-generation opportunity to support the authorities with educational reform across the country. 

As the pandemic unfolded in 2020, the United Nations agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina came together to prioritize education as a focus of our COVID-19 recovery efforts. A quick needs assessment in March-April 2020 by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) and the UN education, culture, and science agency (UNESCO) was the basis for framing a United Nations education recovery programme.

The cornerstone, a joint project, was launched under the leadership of UNICEF and UNESCO, in partnership with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UN Volunteers (UNV), called ‘Reimagine Education for Marginalized Boys and Girls during and post COVID-19’. 

The project was one of only 18 projects globally to receive support from the United Nations Secretary-General’s COVID-19 Recovery Fund, and the only one that focused on the education sector. More importantly, this project was a catalyst for reinforcing United Nations support to the authorities to strengthen cooperation among government ministries, improve teaching capacities, modernize ICT equipment, and develop new digital learning platforms. 

The immediate impact was clear. Between February 2021 and March 2022, UNICEF, UNESCO, and ILO provided 2,498 teachers with training on digital learning and teaching, whilst also providing 664 digital devices (laptops and assistive technology) to 110 schools (26 per cent of overall number of schools). 
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Towards shared education commitments

As the emergency phase of COVID retreated, it became clear that the learning resources, training and equipment provided by the United Nations had helped enhance the collaboration between the country’s numerous education ministries and other stakeholders.

Building on this sense of synergy and cooperation, in the lead up to the Transforming Education Summit, under the coordination leadership of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and in excellent cooperation with Entities, Cantons and Brcko district, the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina convened a series of three pre-Summit consultations with almost 1500 participants from governmental and non-governmental sectors, schools, academia, youth and the private sector.

More than half of the participants (845) involved in the consultations were under the age of 30. After a summer of inclusive dialogue and discussion, the education authorities submitted a Report and Declaration of Commitment to the Transformation Education Summit Secretariat in New York. 

This declaration was adopted by the 16 Ministers responsible for education affairs at the various governing levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It represents the first country-wide policy position on education endorsed in twenty years.

As we move forward, UNESCO and UNICEF are working in support of the relevant education authorities to develop an action plan focused on implementing the commitments outlined in the Declaration. 

The value of our joint efforts to transform and unite the education agenda across Bosnia and Herzegovina has been also recognized by partners. As part of the European Union’s extensive support to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU is considering a stronger engagement to support education over the next 10 years, with UNESCO and UNICEF actively supporting the identification of education-related priorities. 

The path to long-lasting transformation

As we prepare for an exciting week of dialogue, discussion, and commitments during the Transforming Education Summit in New York, I feel proud of the steps we have taken to support the authorities with reform of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s education sector and to build a more inclusive, high-quality and relevant learning experience for all. 

Whilst Bosnia and Herzegovina still faces many challenges in its path towards quality of education, I’ve learnt over the last two years that, with clear global leadership, backed by catalytic pooled funding, and genuine partnership across the United Nations with the authorities, we are now uniquely placed in Bosnia and Herzegovina to deliver on these once-in-a generation transformative educational changes.”
 

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Brazilian artist’s mural ‘for the planet’ proves big draw for UN General Assembly — Global Issues

Spreading along the First Avenue entrance just above New York’s iconic 42nd Street, and rising above the national flags of the world which stretch uptown, the panel covers some 350 square metres, and is due to be officially launched on Friday.

The artist, who has more than 20 other works on display around the city, told UN News that it celebrates sustainability – a central theme of the debates to come next week, as the UN accelerates action towards meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UN Headquarters this year, also displayed work from the artist celebrating the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence.

UN News/Mayra Lopes

Some of the close-up detail from Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra’s huge new mural dedicated to sustainablity, on the wall of UN Headquarters, in New York.

‘The future is now’

Describing his new work which has been turning heads (and blazing a trial across social media) all week, as the huge canvas nears completion, he said the themes were universal, and urgent.

“The message is about the planet we hand over to our next generations. How are we taking care of our planet? Because the future is now. The future has already begun, and we are all responsible for it.”

He said the mural features an “ordinary Brazilian” who feels the same sense that we should all feel, “for taking care of the planet.”

“In the epicentre, you can see Latin America”, he told UN News. “I placed it there precisely because of the care that we have with our dear Amazon.”

The panel features a man and a child, with planet Earth in the middle. Mr. Kobra explained that it represents a father giving his daughter a gift, reflecting what he hopes will be a new legacy of care for the environment, to be delivered to future generations.

It is due to remain on display at least until December.

Working against the clock

To get everything ready in time for the start of High Level Week, which brings together Heads of State and Government from around the world, the artist and his dedicated team have been working long hours, sometimes into the night, stopping as late as 5am.

“We had two or three days of rain. The entire painting process, which is taking a week, would take longer, but we are working to make it faster.”

A further 11 paintings by Kobra were until recently on display at the delegates’ entrance to UN Headquarters. The exhibition was put together following an invitation from the UN Mission of Brazil, to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, earlier this month.

Mr. Kobra is one of the world’s foremost street artists, and his work can be seen from Brazilian megacity São Paulo to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.

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Transform education, and avoid a global learning crisis — Global Issues

Many education experts worry that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold damage to the education prospects of children around the world, exacerbating problems of falling standards that already existed, with millions of children receiving minimal, inadequate education, or no education at all.

In the days before the Transforming Education Summit, UN News met Leonardo Garnier, an academic and former education minister in Costa Rica, who was appointed by the UN Secretary-General as Special Advisor for the Summit.

He explained why going back to the old ways of teaching is not an option, and how the UN can help to bring fresh ideas to classrooms around the world and raise educational standards for children everywhere.

UN News The UN is tackling so many big geopolitical issues right now, such as the climate crisis, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. Why has education been chosen as key theme this year?

Leonardo Garnier It’s precisely the right time to do it, because when there’s an economic slowdown, what usually happens is that education goes under the table: it ceases to be a priority. Governments need money, and they stop spending on education.

The problem here is that the damage this causes is only apparent after several years. If you take the Eighties education crisis, it wasn’t until the Nineties and 2000s that you started to see how countries had lost out because of a lack of educational investment.

Millions of children were left out of school because of the pandemic. But the pandemic also brought out what had been happening for years, because many of those who were in school were not really learning properly.

UN News Talk us through the 1980s educational crisis. What happened, and what were the consequences?

Leonardo Garnier What you saw in many parts of the world was stagflation, and a huge reduction in education budgets. Enrolment rates fell, teacher numbers fell, and many children missed out on education, particularly high school education.

And what that meant is that, in many countries, only around half the labour force finished primary school. When you look at increasing poverty, and increasing inequality in many countries, it is very difficult not to relate that to the reduced educational opportunities of the Eighties and Nineties.

© UNICEF/Veronica Houser

A family sit inside their home, in an informal settlement for internally displaced people in Kabul, Afghanistan.

UN News Do you think that what we’re seeing now is going to potentially lead to a repeat of that situation?

Leonardo Garnier That could happen. From 2000 to 2018 we saw increases in school enrolment rates in most countries, and in educational investment. From then on, educational budgets started to be reduced, and then the pandemic hit.

And then what you have is really two years in which education stopped in many countries, alongside an economic crisis. So yes, there is a risk that, instead of recovering from the pandemic, we could be in an even worse position than we were in 2019.

What the Secretary General is saying is that we have to protect education from this big hit, and recover what we lost in this pandemic. But we actually have to go further.

With SDG 4 [the Sustainable Development Goal to improve access to quality education for all], the UN and global community have set themselves very ambitious targets.

You might think that everybody should have the right to education but, if we keep doing things as they were being done prior to the pandemic, we won’t get there. 

At the Transforming Education Summit, we want to send the message that, if we really want every young person in this planet to have the right to a quality education, we have to do things differently.

We have to transform schools, the way teachers teach, the way we use digital resources, and the way we finance education.

©UNICEF/ Frank Dejongh

A girl studies online at home in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire.

UN News What is your vision for an education system that is fit for the Twenty-First Century?

Leonardo Garnier It has to do with the content, with what we teach and the relevance of education.

On one side, we need the fundamental building blocks of education – literacy, numeracy, scientific thinking – but we also need what some people have called the Twenty-First Century skills. Social skills, problem solving skills.

Teachers need to impart knowledge by sparking curiosity, helping students to solve problems and guiding students through the learning process. But, to do that, teachers need better training, better working conditions, and better wages, because in many countries, the pay for teachers is very low.

They need to understand that their authority does not come from merely having more information than their students, but from their experience and capacity to lead the learning process.

In any labour activity, productivity results in part from the tools we use. When we talk about education, we’ve been using the same tools for around 400 years! With the digital revolution, teachers and learners could have access to much more creative tools for teaching and learning. 

At the Summit, we’re saying that digital resources are what economists call a public good: they require a lot of investment to be produced, and they are not cheap, but once they are produced, everybody could use them. 

We want digital learning resources to be transformed into public goods, so that every country can share their own resources with other countries. For example, teachers from Argentina could share content with teachers from Spain; Egypt has a lovely digital education project that could be shared with many other Arab countries.

The potential is there, but we need to bring everything together into a partnership for digital learning resources. This is something else that we are calling for at the Summit.

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