MDG 4: Education for all by 2030
In 2015, more than 193 heads of state committed to achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The SDGs include eradicating poverty and protecting the planet, provide all children with access to quality education and ensure prosperity for all. Focus on SDGs, which concerns education for all.
What is SDGs?
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDGs) aims to ensure access to equitable, free, quality education for all children and adults and to promote opportunities for lifelong.
SDGs also calls for the construction and improvement of schools. The aim is to increase the number of qualified teachers and to eliminate gender inequalities in education.
Action Education's commitment to achieving education for all
Giving everyone access to quality education, is to enable each individual to have a job, to support his or her family, to be in good health, and to become an enlightened citizen and actor in a sustainable development at the service of all.
For Action Education, education is the key to development. Achieving the goals set out in MDG4 is therefore a key priority.
Action Education, an international association with 40 years of experience in development through education, conducts more than 90 projects in some 20 countries.
From raising the awareness of populations and authorities to the importance of education, through teacher training, the development of innovative educational projects, the creation of school materials and infrastructure, our association works to improve access and quality of education so that "no one is left behind".
A compromised objective?
While the number of children excluded from education has been halved since 2000 and significant progress has been made in achieving education for all, 258 million children and adolescents today are still out of school. For almost a decade, this number has not decreased (UNESCO, 2018). " Rates of out-of-school children have not changed since 2008 in primary education, since 2012 in lower secondary education and since 2013 in upper secondary education," says UNESCO.
By 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a majority of countries to temporarily close schools and remove over 1.6 billion children from school (UNESCO, 2020). Never before in history, so many children have been taken out of school at the same time. The economic and social impact of the global pandemic have therefore forced an interruption in learning. This jeopardises hard-won progress in the field of improving access to and quality of education globally.
Sustainable Development Goal and Education: the next steps
Investing in education is indispensable for the future of the world. Without it, no social, health, economic and political progress is possible.
If nothing is done now, and no further investment is made, the Sustainable Development Goals set for 2030 will be achieved with a minimum of 50 years delay.
UNESCO considers it necessary to multiply by 6 the current level of aid to education to achieve the goal of education for all by 2030 and to focus on funding for education support (Global Monitoring Report on Education - Meeting the Commitments: Are countries on track to achieve MDG 4, UNESCO, 2019).
