Measuring progress in education outcomes post-2015

The post-2015 global education agenda is beginning to take shape. The EFA Steering Committee Joint Proposalendorsed by the UNESCO Executive Board includes seven targets and the race is now on to ensure that the world can monitor progress towards them. How easy is this going to be?

The supply of monitoring data has increased tremendously since the list of EFA indicators was endorsed soon after theWorld Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. But so has the demand for more refined measures of progress.

The first five targets of the EFA Steering Committee Joint Proposal shift the focus from whether education services are being delivered (e.g. enrolment) to the effects of education on children, young people and adults.

Are we ready to monitor such outcomes at a global level? The EFA Steering Committee has established a technical advisory group to tackle this question, of which the EFA GMR is a member. But how close are we to developing relevant indicators? What coordination efforts will it require from the international community? Over the coming weeks we are going to publish a series of five blog posts that examine these questions and others.