Education International Research
3. Primary and Secondary Education Target 4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes Target 4.1 is the target that has received the most attention from the education community since the adoption of SDG 4. However, focus has largely remained on “effective learning outcomes” rather than the importance of relevant and free education. It is concerning that “effective learning outcomes” have been commonly understood as referring to high test scores in numeracy and literacy, as quality education demands far more than this — it requires quality inputs (tools, teachers, learning environments) and quality teaching and learning processes. Meanwhile, children and young people’s right to free, quality, public education is under threat from privatisation, and access to education for all is far from universal.
Too many children remain out of school With the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs, international focus has shifted from access to quality. However, universal access to primary education was never achieved. The number of outofschool children has been stalling for over ten years; in 2017, 64 million children remained outof-school,41 showing that access must remain a major policy focus. Globally, completion rates are 73% for lower secondary and 49% for upper secondary education.42 Whilst access to primary and secondary education is slowly improving, equitable completion of education is a key issue, not just in low- but also high-income countries. In Europe, early school leaving is pinpointed by unions as being one of the top obstacles to achievement of SDG 4 in both Spain and Armenia. Disadvantaged or vulnerable students and students from minority groups are most often the ones forced to drop out when the curriculum or school culture are unable to adapt to their needs. Support strategies to help retain children in school are especially important in areas where child labour is prevalent. The box below shows how unions are working in collaboration with employers and local governments to put an end to child labour and keep children in school.
Box 5: Education Unions Use an Innovative, Multi-Faceted Approach to Combat Child Labour One Community at a Time GRO.EI-IE
Child labour is work performed by a child that is likely to interfere with his or her right to education or to be harmful to his or her health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Worldwide, 152 million children are victims of child labour. Almost half of them (72 million) are in Africa, whilst 62.1 million are in Asia and the Pacific. Child labour is primarily concentrated in agriculture (71%) but can also be found in services, the industrial sector and mining.43
0302 NOITA CUDE
Many approaches to eradicate child labour focus on specific sectors or only on the worst forms of child labour. However, if we are to achieve SDG 4 and ensure education for all, we must make no distinction between the types of work children do but instead ensure that the right to quality education is guaranteed for every child.
41 UNESCO. 2019. Migration, Displacement and Education. Building Bridges not Walls. Global Education Monitoring Report. p. 145. Retrieved from: https:// en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2019/migration 42 UNESCO. 2019. Migration, Displacement and Education. Building Bridges not Walls. Global Education Monitoring Report. p. 145. Retrieved from: https:// en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2019/migration 43 See ILO statistics: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm
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