By Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report
As we enter 2026, it is worth reflecting on global education commitments. A lot was built on the belief that one goal, combined with a comprehensive framework of targets, indicators and advocacy, could rise above the messy realities of politics and power. That technical precision could substitute for political will. Was that belief wrong?
The SDGs, for all their contradictions and unfulfilled promises, did at least articulate a shared vision. SDG 4, in particular, helped broaden countries’ policy outlooks, mainstreaming concepts such as equity and inclusion, learning, sustainable development and lifelong learning. But we do need to take responsibility for when we cheer for unattainable targets. For too long, we have moved from ambition to ambition, pushing for targets that sound impressive in international forums but crumble against reality.
As this, and the last global education agenda have shown us, countries do not move at the speed they are asked to. The original deadline for achieving universal primary education was set for the year 2000, only to be pushed to 2015, and then again to 2030. It will be pushed back further again, regrettably. Despite more information and more accountability measures, progress stubbornly takes its time.
This is not without consequences. There is a price to pay when there is a gap between rhetoric and reality. International agendas have become discredited. Development aid is proving harder to defend. The very people that such aid is targeting are growing cynical about global commitments of solidarity.
A different approach?
Development is best understood through history. History, though, is but ‘a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises, and absurdities’, as the American historian Henry Steele Commager once described it. If we are to report on it at all, he wrote, we must impose some order upon it, but not the false order of one-size-fits-all solutions. What if, instead of imposing new universal targets, we listened more? What if national ownership of the education agenda is what will reinvigorate it?
Context matters. Countries have different starting points, different political economies, different social fabrics. Targets cannot be set at a global level and expected to take root everywhere. But what is possible is to agree on principles, such as equity, and expect countries to report on them. Monitoring can help keep these issues visible without being prescriptive about solutions, as international organizations are sometimes keen to do. Arguably, the added value of an international agenda should be measured not in relation to its aspirational targets, given that none of the SDG 4 targets currently stand any chance of being reached, but on whether countries set, communicate and set off to achieve their targets in areas of global consensus. This may be a more reliable way to see progress becoming faster relative to past trends.
The most interesting plants often grow in the dark, away from the spotlight of global conferences. Real progress is also happening in countries that may have been overlooked, just as stagnation persists in places that were expected to succeed. Conversely, countries which appear to be progressing in some measure may be doing so in a way that lowers the standard, while countries which appear to be stalling may be hard done by the weaknesses of an indicator.
The upcoming approach of the next three editions of the GEM Report will reflect this shift, giving it a different look and feel from the format of recent years. It aims to identify countries that have improved at well above average rates over the past decade or two, and to understand why. Not to extract ‘lessons’ to be mechanically applied elsewhere, but to learn from experiences and the complex, messy, often surprising stories of what happened when policy met reality. It means acknowledging that what explains progress differs on a country-by-country basis, even while searching for patterns.
At the root of this is the approach taken in the national SDG 4 benchmarking process, that the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the GEM Report have been leading since 2019. Through the SDG 4 Scorecard, countries’ progress is monitored relative to their own national targets, which are in line with the global targets in SDG 4, but reflect their own context. Importantly, they are country-owned. The targets are a conversation started with countries, not a decision already made without them. It is a strong basis upon which any new agenda should be built.
The three questions that matter
Finding order in the ‘jangle’ of history explains the next three GEM Report editions in the Countdown to 2030 series have been carved to respond to three fundamental – and admittedly inseparable – questions: Who learns? What is learnt? Why learn?
These questions refer to three critical dimensions: access, quality and the relevance of education. When all three move together, and when every child is in school, learning well, for a life that matters, education becomes not just preparation for life, but preservation of it.
True progress towards the vision of SDG 4 lies in equilibrium between these three parts: inclusive, effective and purposeful learning for people and the planet. A child is less likely to learn if not in school, for instance (access and quality). Education is only relevant if people can use it to do meaningful work; nobody wants to be unemployed (learning and relevance). Access to education has to offer learners different options so they can get where they want to go, making choices that matter to their lives (access and relevance).
From formulas to stories
It is wrong to oversimplify. One goal, or one policy for everyone, while tempting, will backfire. The Countdown series aims to remind its readers that the future of global cooperation in education is not about recipes. It is about understanding policy narratives, about being humble enough to learn from countries that have found their own paths forward, even when those paths do not match our theories.
Some will see this as lowering ambition. I see it as raising our standards for honesty. The question is not whether a perfect global framework can be crafted. The question is whether countries can be supported in their own journeys toward better education systems, learning from their experiences without imposing our blueprints.
On the cusp of a new year, perhaps the most radical thing to do is trade in universal prescriptions for genuine curiosity about how change actually happens. The age of top-down development targets may be ending, but the age of bottom-up, context-aware, nationally owned educational progress can begin, if we have the wisdom to let it.
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