Experts map out objectives for Asia-Pacific Training Manual to monitor SDG4 progress

UNESCO Bangkok and partners are developing a training manual to assist Asia-Pacific Member States in measuring and monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4)-Education 2030 Agenda.

A draft plan for the first six modules for the proposed, “Asia-Pacific Training Manual to Monitor SDG4-Education 2030”, was agreed to at a recent Regional Expert Meeting, organized by UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok), the UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and the Pacific (EAPRO) as well as experts from nine countries in the region.

The meeting, which was held from 11-13 October in Bangkok, explored some of the major capacity development needs of Member States at different levels, including:

• Institutional capacity/enabling environment: raising awareness, strengthening statistical rules, laws, policies/ strategies, development of coordination mechanism

• Organizational capacity: strengthening internal structure, mechanism, procedures and resources, development of statistical infrastructure, establishing coordination among different data producers, clarity in roles and responsibilities

• Individual capacity: skills, experience and knowledge in data collection, data analysis and interpretation and data use and dissemination, managing and governing whole statistical data production system

The training manual will aim to address these needs and equip statisticians and monitoring officers working in education with the skills they need to more effectively monitor and measure progress toward SDG4. Experts discussed the content for the proposed manual, including possible topics to include as well as good practices and case studies in Asia-Pacific countries, agreeing on these six modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to monitoring SDG4 and the importance of national mechanisms and tools to monitor the global, thematic and national indicators frameworks

• Module 2: School management information systems for a holistic administrative data system

• Module 3: Establishing/strengthening Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) for Effective Monitoring of SDG 4

• Module 4: Using household surveys to monitor SDG4

• Module 5: Data analysis, reporting and dissemination

• Module 6: Utilizing various sources of data for more comprehensive monitoring of SDG4

Next Steps

At the conclusion of the meeting, experts agreed on this tentative timeline for the development of training materials:

All the meeting documents are available here.

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