Rebuilding, Renewing, Transforming School Systems
Global Initiatives on Transforming School Systems
There are several global initiatives being led by UN agencies and others to to transform school systems for 2050 and beyond. This page maintains an updated list & descriptions of some of these initiatives. 

The global organizations representing teachers and other educators working in schools have developed a draft joint statement that provides advice on some of the principles, processes and other aspects that countries, states and provinces should consider as they chart their course towards inclusive, equitable, excellent and sustainable school systems. Go directly to the draft statement. This statement has been prepared by these organizations representing teachers, principals, school district administrators, senior school leaders, counsellors and school psychologists. 

The organizations developing this joint statement will be using it as a basis for their input into a variety of UN and global initiatives on rebuilding, renewing and transforming school systems. Here is a list of those global consultations and discussions. 
Recent/Ongoing Global Initiatives on School Reform
Summary of the Initiative/Implications
UN 2020 Summit on Transforming Education
(September 2022, New York, Linked to UN General Assembly)

​The UN Secretary-General has announced he will convene a summit on Transforming Education in September 2022. The summit is proposed in ‘Our Common Agenda,’ as part of the focus on better representing young people and future generations.

A concept note, an introduction from the UN Secretary General and a second online briefing for UN member states describe the planning of the event to date.
A first  meeting of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee is scheduled for mid-March. A special advisor has been named. A pre-summit will be organized in Paris in June/July 2022 
The summit will employ three primary work streams:
  • National consultations: Member States will be
    encouraged to embark on inclusive national consultations in the lead up to the Summit aimed at developing a shared vision and commitment to transform education between now and 2030. UNESCO offices in each country will facilitate these country led discussions. Other regional consultations are likely to occur or have already occurred.
  • Thematic Action Tracks will focus on areas that require greater action in order to transform
    education. The tracks will offer all Summit partners a space to share evidence-based solutions for accelerating SDG4 and reimagining education as well as help mobilize international cooperation. These Priority areas include:
    - inclusive, equitable, safe & healthy schools
    - learning skills for life, work and sustainable development
    - teachers and the teaching profession
    - digital literacy
    - education financing
    * gender is a cross-cutting priority and education in emergencies (conflicts) is likely to be highlighted
  • Public engagement: Building off a range of existing efforts and in tandem with the national
    consultations, the Summit will seek to use media to build strong public engagement and place youth and children to the fore of Summit preparation     
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UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals 
Education and the critical role of schools in achieving the goals is not only described in Goal #4 but throughout all of the other 16 goals. An  list of the indicators for Goal 4 (education) has been published.

The 2015 Incheon Declaration and accompanying Framework for Action defined the goals for education in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

A complicated set of activities and processes has been established to monitor the achievement of all 17 of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. UNESCO is the lead on monitoring Goal #4 (Education). Target 4.7 is most relevant concerning the monitoring of education and student learning.
The Technical Cooperation Group (TCG) provides a platform to discuss and develop the indicators. The TCG is composed of 35 regionally representative members of Member States, multilateral agencies and civil society groups. It has several working groups, including administrative data/EMIS, learning assessments, household surveys, teacher data, education expenditures, education in emergencies and indicator development.

A detailed memo on the deliberations of the ​Technical Cooperation Group (TCG) was prepared for FRESH Partners in January 2021 and revised in March 2022. The implications and actions related to health & well-being are noted in this memo.

The Global Alliance on Monitoring Learning brings together a broad range of stakeholders, including experts and decision-makers involved in national and cross-national learning assessment initiatives, as well as donors and civil society organizations. GAML has established six Task Forces to address the technical issues to these topics, including  reading & math, child & adolescent development, literacy & numeracy, digital literacy, sustainable development U& data quality.
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UNESCO Statutory consultation & survey of Member States
This formal reporting by Member States has been done every four years since 1974.  The original purpose of this process was to track countries policies and actions to promote human rights and peace. UNESCO is currently consulting widely on how this reporting done  can be revised to better reflect the needs of education and countries. 
In 2021, the 7th UNESCO consultation/survey was modified to include the indicators identified in Target 4.7 of the SDGs. That 7th consultation & survey was sent to member countries in September 2021. By January 2022, only 71 countries had responded. UNESCO decided to consult member countries on the revision of the consultation/survey. Input was sought from a broad range of stakeholders in an online survey and work is continuing with a view to adopting a new instrument and process in the UNESCO General Council in 2023.

This extensive consultation on its revision (which finally Included Health & Well-Being) has led to a draft global monitoring framework/survey format going to the next UNESCO Members meeting.
OECD Future of Education & Skills 2030 Initiative The initiative aims to help education systems determine the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students need to thrive in and shape their future. It includes a Learning Compass, a framework (see the Compass concept notes) for helping students navigate towards well-being.  The initiative builds on earlier OECD (2005) work on student competencies, adding “transformative” competencies to the mix. The project includes the development of research and guidance on student agency and teacher development & wellness, curriculum design & analysis, including a look at Physical Education and ways to address curriculum overload. The initiative holds regular forums on different topics and has focus groups comprised of government representatives, curriculum implementers and students.
This OECD initiative has published four papers on curriculum reform. The latest examines how attitudes and values can be embedded in curricula. The previous papers addressed how curricula can be adapted to bridge equity gaps, presented a 21st century model and discussed ways in which curriculum overload can be addressed.

Teacher competencies are also being described in other OECD work. A specific analysis based on 16 countries by PE-focused officials And researchers implies that the curriculum structure most often used in promoting health, personal and social development is a combined Health & PE course. (This will be investigated further in a ISHN-UNICEF-SFU study that works from a previous FRESH Working Group on , Health Literacy, Life Skills & Social Inclusion.
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5th Forum on Transformative Education
​(co-hosted by UNESCO, APCEIU and Korea) called for the mainstreaming of transformative education emphasizing the social role of schooling, including education for sustainable development, global citizenship and health & well-being,
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World Bank SABER systems monitoring 
World Bank activities including monitoring and influencing of education quality through its funding and its SABER systems self-assessment tools
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International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030
​regularly holds forums on teacher education and development which includes a background paper on the Futures of Teaching. 
Recent and planned activities in the TTF 2020-25 Strategic Plan include a comprehensive report on the progress being made on Target 4c of the UN 2030 Goals. This target is promoting an increased supply of qualified teachers around the world. Another TTF activity will focus on teacher as the primary agents in transforming schools.
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Salzburg Global Seminar
This global think tank uses web-based programs and publications to focus on inter-sectoral creative & healthy societies, long-term & sustainable development, rule of law & social trust.
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The Education Commission
This ongoing Commission is chaired by the UN Special Envoy on Education. It has published a report on transforming the education workforce through differentiated staffing & including professionals from other sectors who work with schools in school-based teams. It is also working on education financing in general and on school health and nutrition specifically 
The recent EC report Rewiring Education for People and Planet proposes a multi-part plan for transforming schools. The plan includes expanding early childhood education, a team-based education work force, scaling up inclusive teaching, increasing school meals and school health programs, creating diverse routes for students graduation adapting schools for climate resilience. Support for these plans would come from mobilising new sources for education funding and embedding school programs in other sectors and whole of government development planning, which will include muklti-sector financing approaches. (This EC  initiative is a good fit with the call for better use of intersectoral policy-program coordination frameworks suggested by ISHN/FRESH partners. )
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Read the draft joint statement, consider endorsing, in principle or in part,  or commenting on the statement

Key Points in the Draft Joint Statement 


What's New in Global Discussions of School Recovery, Improvement & Reform 
The National SDG 4 Benchmarks are monitoring seven selected indicators derived from a larger set of 50+ Official Indicators tracking the “targets” described in Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals. These benchmarks are part of a commitment from countries to develop a set of contextually relevant benchmarks. They were developed in different regions of the world and are now being led by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the GEM Report. They have attracted more attention because of the difficulties within countries in collecting reliable data on all SDG 4 targets.
The seven indicators in the current National Benchmarks are: participation in early childhood education, out-of-school rate, completion rate, completion rate upper secondary (gender gap), minimum learning proficiency in reading & math, trained teachers and education expenditures. The UN Transforming Education Summit added three more items to the National Benchmarks (greening education, digital transformation and youth/student engagement in policy making). Indicators for these items are being developed.  The Benchmarks are to be reported each January as part of the International Day of Education. The first National Benchmarks report (2023) has been published.

It appears that the National Benchmarks have become the primary focus for much of the UN monitoring of Goal 4. This implies that offering a broad range of learning opportunities in the longer list of original Goal 4 targets is being ignored. This ignorance will likely preclude any tracking of health & life skills education. The Educators Joint Statement and Position Paper have noted that ignorance about vaccines, health literacy and social responsibility/public health caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid.

As well, the relationship between the UNESCO monitoring of national policies (see the revision of the 1974 UNESCO national consultation/survey), where health & well-being may be added is not clear.