SDG 4: Quality Education

If your research contributes to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education add the keyword "SDG 4", "SDG4: Quality Education" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" to your article/book/chapter/conference paper/ dataset and we will automatically add it to this rapidly growing collection of research outputs. See the instructions here. 

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At the end of 2019, millions of children and young people were still out of school, and more than half of those in school were not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and numeracy. The closure of schools to slow the spread of COVID-19 is having an adverse impact on learning outcomes and the social and behavioural development of children and young people. It has affected more than 90 per cent of the world’s student population, 1.5 billion children and young people. Although remote learning is provided to many students, children and young people in vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, such as those living in remote areas, extreme poverty, fragile states and refugee camps, do not have the same access thereto. The digital divide will widen existing gaps in equality with regard to education.

In 74 countries with comparable data for the 2011–2019 period, around 7 in 10 children 3 and 4 years of age were on track developmentally in at least three of the following domains: literacy-numeracy, physical development, social-emotional development and learning.

Participation in organized learning one year before the official primary age of entry grew steadily, from 62 per cent in 2010 to 67 per cent in 2018. However, variation among countries is still wide, with values ranging from 9 to nearly 100 per cent.

The primary school completion rate reached 84 per cent in 2018, up from 70 per cent in 2000. Under current trends, the rate is expected to reach 89 per cent globally by 2030. In 2018, 258 million children, adolescents and young people 6 to 17 years of age were still out of school, representing 17 per cent of the global population of that age group. Parity between children or adolescents from the richest and poorest quintiles of the population was achieved in 25 per cent of countries for primary education, 21 per cent of countries for lower secondary education and only 1 per cent of countries for upper secondary education.

In 2018, some 773 million adults, two thirds of them women, remained illiterate in terms of reading and writing skills. The global adult literacy rate, for the population 15 years of age and older, was 86 per cent in 2018, while the youth literacy rate, for the population 15 to 24 years of age, was 92 per cent. Southern Asia is home to nearly half of the global illiterate population, and sub-Saharan Africa is home to one quarter thereof.

In 2019, less than one half of primary and lower secondary schools in subSaharan Africa had access to electricity, the Internet, computers and basic handwashing facilities, key basic services and facilities necessary to ensure a safe and effective learning environment for all students.

ODA for scholarships amounted to $1.6 billion in 2018, up from $1.3 billion in 2017. 

Based on data from 129 countries, the percentage of primary school teachers receiving the minimum pedagogical training according to national standards throughout the world has stagnated at 85 per cent since 2015. The percentage is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (64 per cent) and Southern Asia (72 per cent).

Source: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, Report of the Secretary-General, https://undocs.org/en/E/2020/57

Learn more at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4

Join us at ScienceOpen in collectively curating a list of research articles by tagging your work via keywords, either through the publication process with your publisher, or after the fact by adding keywords to your work on ScienceOpen. If your research contributes to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education add the keyword "SDG 4", "SDG4: Quality Education" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" to your article/book/chapter/conference paper/ dataset and we will automatically add it to this rapidly growing collection of research outputs. See the instructions here: 

To raise awareness for this important research, the UN Sustainable Development Goals on ScienceOpen collection is promoted throughout the discovery environment in search menus, as "Related collection" banners and article recommendations. If you are working on a particular SDG you can add your work to the collection in 4 easy steps:

1. Register on ScienceOpen at https://www.scienceopen.com/register.
2. Link to your ORCID profile (or create an ORCID ID): This will automatically add your publication list to ScienceOpen.
3. For a relevant article click on "Add keywords" from your profile page.
4. Add the relevant SDG(s) to the keyword section, for example "SDG 4" or "SDG4: Quality Education" and/or "Sustainable Development Goals" and save! Your article will now be automatically added to the relevant collection within 24 hours. You can also add a lay summary, catchy image, disciplines and data availability statements to your work to increase its visibility.

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