Measuring and improving skills – the new ‘global currency’

The OECD Skills Strategy, launched this week at the OECD Forum, underlines the importance of our focus on the marginalized in the forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, on youth, skills and work. While those who are in education or work gain skills throughout their lives, the OECD finds those who are neither [...]

Africa Progress Report calls for big push on education

Urgent action is needed to tackle a “twin crisis” in access to education and the quality of teaching, according to the 2012 Africa Progress Report, Jobs, Justice and Equity: Seizing Opportunities in Times of Global Change, which was launched on Friday at the World Economic Forum on Africa, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “With 30 million [...]

BRIEFLY: Skills for work on the agenda in Shanghai

With high youth unemployment making headlines around the world, it is more crucial than ever to give young people a chance to learn the skills that employers need. Policy makers and education specialists from around the world will tackle these issues when they meet in Shanghai for the Third International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education [...]

More children are in school – but are they learning?

By Susan Davis, president and chief executive, BRAC USA With the Education for All goals and the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015 on our minds, perhaps it’s time to start thinking about measurements of educational quality, rather than a simple push for increased student enrollment in developing countries. Most public schools in the [...]

How pre-school can transform children’s chances

Young children are ready to learn, but their early experiences are crucial in facilitating their learning. As we explain in our new policy paper on early childhood care and education, there is striking evidence that extending pre-school access to the poorest and most vulnerable children can boost their education and livelihood opportunities later in life. [...]

Children who need pre-school most are missing out

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report Young children who are marginalized by poverty or other factors stand to benefit most from early childhood care and education – but across the world, they are the ones who have least access to it. Offering disadvantaged children better health care, nutrition and [...]

Education as a way out of exploitation

A new video and an accompanying article released by UNICEF about education in northern Benin turn the spotlight on child labour, child trafficking and other factors that rob children of their right to education. As we will discuss in our forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report on youth, skills and work, children who [...]

Rural women miss out on education — and decent jobs

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, “Empower Rural Women,” sheds light on the struggle that many poor, rural women face in completing even the most basic education — a finding that is backed up by new data analysis [...]

The struggle to learn skills in the city

UNICEF’s flagship annual report, launched today, focuses on the lives of marginalized children in urban areas. The State of the World’s Children 2012 finds that children in urban environments are often denied their right to education, leaving many without the skills they need to find a good job. Almost half of the world’s children now [...]

Listening to the voices of young people

No one feels more strongly than young people themselves the mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that they acquire in education systems. Or, for many, the skills they don’t get a chance to acquire: 74 million adolescents aren’t even enrolled at school. That’s why we are currently listening to the voices [...]