Was it really three years? When I think back to my time as Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, the period fades into a blur of deadlines and launch events, liberally interspersed with the missives from irate governments unhappy at our failure to pay due respect to their country’s record. After each report, as I recall, there was a moment of quiet team reflection. We would firmly resolve to plan for a less pressurized report cycle, before proceeding to repeat the pattern of previous years.
That role can be traced back to the very early years. The report was created with the express purpose of monitoring progress towards the EFA goals adopted in Dakar and, by extension, the Millennium Development Goals. And it was created independent. Unlike the institutional reports that have to pass through an official censor and avoid all criticism of governments, individual donors and international institutions, the Global Monitoring Report has the privilege of editorie independence – and the associated privilege to tell it like it is.
There is much to celebrate on the 10th anniversary of the EFA Global Monitoring Report. One of them is the fact that the reports have appeared! Looking back over the nine volumes, it is extraordinary that such small teams have produced such high quality reports over what are exceptionally short research cycles. More than any other report (OK, I admit to personal bias), the Global Monitoring Report plays a pivotal role in holding governments to account and setting the agenda on education.
When it comes to monitoring, independence matters. In education, as in other areas, governments around the world have an unhealthy habit of signing up to bold declarations, adopting ambitious targets, and then carrying on business as usual. From the outset, the Global Monitoring Report has challenged this tradition by providing the data against which to measure performance, and an authoritative voice to report on what has – and has not – been achieved.
Part of the Report’s remit is to act as an advocate for the Education for All agenda. It is easy to overlook how effective it has been in this area. Some of the earliest reports – on gender and the quality of education – helped to put widely ignored issues at the centre of policy dialogue. As more recent evidence has underlined, the report on the importance of early childhood education was in many respects ahead of its time. The 2010 report on marginalization turned the spotlight on the failure of governments to tackle the inequalities in education. In 2011 we turned our attention to the conflict-affected states that now account for over 40 per cent (and rising) of the world’s out-of-school population.
Deepa Singh
Business Developer
Web Site:-http://www.gyapti.com
Blog:- http://gyapti.blogspot.com
Email Id:-deepa.singh@soarlogic.com
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