The Global Education Monitoring Report 24/25 documents the state of education worldwide. UNESCO uses it to monitor how far the international community has come in achieving inclusive, equitable quality education, and lifelong learning for all by 2030. Diplomatisches Magazin spoke to the President of the German Commission for UNESCO, Prof. Dr Maria Böhmer, about the Global Education Monitoring Report.
DM: Prof. Dr Böhmer, the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, including access to education, are set to be achieved by 2030. What is the state of education worldwide, five years before the 2030 target?
Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer: We are seeing progress. The current Global Education Monitoring Report 2024/25 finds that more people than ever before are participating in education: Compared to 2015, about 110 million more children, adolescents and young adults are attending school. Graduation rates are also rising. But the report also shows that there is still a great deal to be done. Despite rising enrolment rates, more than 250 million children and young people worldwide remain without schooling, and 650 million leave school without completing secondary education. This means that we are far from achieving the United Nations education goal. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an accelerated decline in learning outcomes. Despite the alarming data, national and international investment in education is declining worldwide. High debt and the associated spending are a problem for many countries. At the same time, we face major challenges ahead of us in education, including digitalisation and the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Although digital media can facilitate access to education, new skills must be taught and learned at the same time.
DM: The 2024/25 Global Education Monitoring Report focuses on ‘Leadership in Education’. What are the key messages?
Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer: The focus is on the special role of leaders in the quality and success of an education system. First of all, these are the school principals. The key finding is that strong school principals who set clear goals, promote learning success, strengthen cooperation in everyday school life and take care of personnel development are crucial for the education system. However, the report also states that all too often, school leaders lack the decision-making freedom they need to fully exploit the potential of their role. Administrative tasks take up a lot of their time. If we want high-quality education, we must ensure that school leaders energy can be channelled into developing their schools.
The report makes four recommendations:
- School leaders need sufficient freedom of action and the necessary resources to successfully develop their schools.
- In addition to appropriate recruitment procedures, school leaders need suitable training and professional development to prepare them for their tasks.
- Cooperation between leaders is essential. Leadership leads to good education where goals and tasks are shared with teachers, students and parents.
- There needs to be investment in managers in educational administration. Education authorities should not only control schools, but also support them.
DM: What surprised you most about this report?
Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer: I am very pleased with the clarity with which the authors emphasise the importance of leaders in education and at the same time make it clear that leaders are needed at all levels, starting with the individual school, through to employees in education administration and political decision-makers. One interesting finding in this context is that the report shows that having more women in leadership positions, especially in politics, has a positive impact on education. At the same time, we observe that although many women work as teachers worldwide, only a small percentage of school principals are female. So there is great potential for improvement here. The many very specific recommendations are both encouraging and helpful. Certainly, we need more money for education worldwide. However, it is also clear that we can achieve a great deal for the quality of education in the way we select, prepare and train our leaders. Unfortunately, it is hardly surprising that we spend too little on education worldwide in times of tight budgets. However, it should be a wake-up call for us that there is an urgent need for action here.
DM: Around 250 million children and young people worldwide grow up without any school education at all. Which countries are particularly affected and why?
Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer: aThere are indeed very large regional differences here. Around 33% of children and young people of school age in low-income countries are not in school, compared to only 3% in high-income countries. More than half of the world’s out-of-school children and adolescents live in sub-Saharan Africa. Too many children there start school late and repeat grades. While gender disparities in completion rates at the secondary level have been eliminated at the global level, they remain high in sub-Saharan Africa. Many teachers there do not have the required minimum qualifications. The gap in education investment between countries is alarming: low-income countries spent only $55 per student in 2022, compared to $8,543 in high-income countries. The situation is particularly dramatic in sub-Saharan Africa, not least due to high debt. In 2022, the states in this region spent almost as much on debt service as they did on education. At the same time, the share of official development assistance going to education worldwide fell from 9.3% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2022.
DM: What needs to be done to change this?
Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer: Investing in education is an investment in the future that pays off. In this context, the Global Education Monitoring Report will continue to be in demand as a key instrument in the future. It also highlights the importance of targeted financing. People who are threatened by wars and conflicts also deserve our special support. I will mention Sudan and Ukraine as examples here. Another point is important to me: if we want to improve the quality of and access to education, we must always consider the entire biography. We know that early childhood education is extremely important for further education. To ensure a successful transition to work, we should definitely strengthen the importance of vocational training worldwide, alongside academic training.
DM: Frau Prof. Böhmer, thank you for this interview.
INTERVIEW Marie Wildermann
----------
Prof. Dr. Maria BöhmerMaria Böhmer was a member of the German Bundestag for 27 years (1990-2017). As Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, she negotiated the sustainability goals of the 2030 Agenda at the United Nations and was Chair of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2015. From 2005 to 2013, she was the German Chancellor’s Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration. A professor of education in Heidelberg since 2001, she has been President of the German Commission for UNESCO since 2018.