It’s a new year, and we’re introducing our new name! As from today, we are formally becoming the GEM Report: the Global Education Monitoring Report.
It is now officially ‘post-2015’ and a new set of international goals and targets are in place. The GEM Report has changed its name and logo in order to reflect its new mandate to monitor international education targets until 2030. Our mandate was officially confirmed in the Framework for Action Education 2030:
“The EFA Global Monitoring Report will be continued in the form of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report. It will be prepared by an independent team and hosted and published by UNESCO. The Director of the team is appointed by the Director-General of UNESCO. Attention will be paid to geographical balance in its Advisory Board. The GEM Report will be the mechanism for monitoring and reporting on SDG 4 and on education in the other SDGs, with due regard to the global mechanism to be established to monitor and review the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It will also report on the implementation of national and international strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account for their commitments as part of the overall SDG follow-up and review.”
The GEM Report 2016: The first report in the new GEM Report series will be launched in September this year. It will discuss and design a framework for the monitoring of progress along the global education targets from now until 2030. The Report will also focus on ‘Education, sustainability and the post-2015 development agenda’, examining the complex interrelationships and links between education and key development sectors.
The theme of the 2017 GEM Report is also now confirmed, and will focus on the vital topic of accountability in education.
The Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report) (formerly known as the Education for All Global Monitoring Report) will continue to be an editorially independent, authoritative, and evidence-based annual report published by UNESCO. It will monitor progress towards education targets in the new Sustainable Development Goals framework. We have accumulated huge experience in this field of work having produced twelve Reports since 2002 covering themes ranging from inequality and marginalization, gender and adult literacy to conflict, teaching and learning, and early childhood care and education.
With a renewed mandate, and drawing on a well-tested model and highly valued analytical experience, the GEM Report seeks to solidify its reputation as an invaluable global resource and advocacy tool, promoting informed dialogue and increased public awareness about progress and challenges in education.
Please help us make sure our new name is known.
Allow me to put in a plea at this early stage for GEM reports to focus on groups of children and young people who have not benefited from Education for All- in particular children with disabilities who were not mentioned in the MDGs. Although sustained NGO advocacy has secured their inclusion in SDG Goal 4 and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics has committed to the inclusion of disability-disaggregated statistics, parents and advocates are justified in asking GEM to improve on GMR in not continuing the neglect of children with disabilities who make up at least one third of the world’s 58 million out of school children.
Respectfully, she is Right.
Greetings from Nepal! I do like and appreciate the idea of GEM. Most importantly, there is huge need for global level awareness amongst high level politicians like PMs and presidents, UN agencies’ heads, development donors as well as social movement leaders about how to deliver quality basic education to all as their basic needs. How to establish education as equalizer rather than divider of society? How to stop commodification of education from local to global level – need for monitoring progress on these backbone issues. I expect this independent expert team not just to play around statistics and produce another global report, which does not show any direction. Democratization of education is very crucial, addressing inequalities through education is possible and imperative. It is high time to build robust public education campaigns in every country in the mode of social justice movements, only then can we connect it with SDGs. And, GEM report need to add value to such global level education movements.
Bimal Kumar Phnuyal
Country Director,
ActionAid International in Nepal