About the Campaign
About the Campaign
A campaign for all countries to report back to their citizens on their progress in education
Governments are the primary duty bearers for the right to education. Governments should be transparent about their progress towards their education commitments so that we can hold them to account. However, only one in every two countries have published a national education monitoring report since 2010, and most do not produce them very regularly.
The 2017/8 GEM Report showed that national education monitoring reports are a vital tool for transparency and accountability. Such reports should provide timely and relevant information on whether progress is being made towards the objectives of the national education strategy or plan.
National monitoring reports are also an important tool through which civil society and the media can hold governments to account. They demonstrate government’s commitment to transparency and to sharing important information on decision making processes, budgets, expenditure, activities and results to citizens in an accessible manner.
What is a national education monitoring report?
But it’s not just governments that have a role to play here. Regional organizations can also produce monitoring reports, which provide a snapshot of progress and challenges in reaching the goals of regional education strategies and plans, which may also be aligned to a lesser or greater extent with SDG 4. Similarly, regional reports can also serve as a mechanism for knowledge sharing and peer learning amongst policy makers in and across regions.
The 2017/8 GEM Report also shows that civil society organizations (CSOs) play a key role as independent watchdogs in holding governments accountable for their education commitments. For this reason, in dozens of countries, CSOs and coalitions have joined forces to produce national CSO reports on the implementation of education plans and strategies. The findings and recommendations in alternative reports provide a non-governmental source of information, and are essential components to providing a comprehensive overview of national education systems.
Call to action
Let’s combine efforts to ensure that more countries produce regular, relevant and rigorous national education monitoring reports for their citizens.
Join the GEM Report’s campaign that follows up on one of its key recommendations and call on:
All governments to:
- take steps towards producing a regular national education monitoring report, capturing progress on education commitments across all education levels, and government education expenditure;
- make reports publicly available to their citizens, including on the internet;
- use their national education monitoring reports as key sources for the education section of their SDG national voluntary reviews;
All regional organizations with an education agenda to:
- produce regional education monitoring reports, based on their regional education strategies and monitoring frameworks, thereby influencing national approaches to monitoring education.
How you can take part
Endorse our campaign by:
- Finding out whether and when your country produced a report.
- Writing and tweeting to your Minister of Education, show them this is important to you. Use our template letter and template tweet.
- Email your national education coalition to say you want to join them in making this a priority. For the contact details of your local education coalition visit the Campaign for Education website.
- Sign up to the campaign.
Help keep our campaign up to date: Use our online form to help us update the list of national education monitoring reports on the website to increase transparency and access to existing reports.