1 Introduction

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set the scene for an ambitious development framework in a global context of widening inequalities within and between countries, global economic crises, conflict, and climate change. Building on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs propose a transformation of the existing economic, social, and environmental status quo across the world. If the ambition is taken at face value, it presents a radical political project that proposes to fundamentally alter human society by 2030 through the achievement of these goals and related targets. To achieve its ambition will require a level of political will, financing, and radical action never before seen. The consensus reached on SDG 4 reflects the value placed on education by people from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds around the globe, as well as by governments of different political persuasions. Despite the apparent consensus, tensions over quality and learning evident in the global policy formulation processes were not fully resolved in SDG 4 and have continued since the adoption of the SDGs in September 2015.

The year 2013 appears to have marked the explicit beginning of the struggle in which vision of education would prevail, with a key meeting organised by UNESCO and UNICEF held in Dakar, Senegal, and the launch of the High-Level Panel report (UN, 2013b). Between 2013 and 2015, different groups put forward their agendas; this included formal processes and extensive lobbying by a range of stakeholders. These can be categorised as two interrelated processes, the New York UN post-MDG process and the Paris post-EFA (Education for All) process. This included UNDP-led consultations on the post-2015 agenda, among which was a global on-line consultation on the ‘World We Want’ survey. These initiatives were complemented through face-to-face consultations and intergovernmental meetings such as in Dakar (2013), Muscat (2014), and Incheon (2015), as well as country-level dialogue fora ahead of the final agreement on the sustainable development agenda. The deliberations of the Open Working Group (OWG), which began its work at the Rio+20 conference (see Chapter 2 by Antonia Wulff for details), were a major part of the process. Among the debates that characterised this process were the following:

1. – whether education would be a stand-alone goal;
2. – if it were a stand-alone goal, whether it would encapsulate a full agenda, that carried forward the broad scope of the EFA movement;
3. – contestation about the focus of learning and quality as well as access;
4. – contestation about which organisation would lead the global education agenda.

The two strands of debate and policy development – the education discussion and the UN process under the OWG – came together in the final text of the education goal. At face value, that text appears to offer a compromise between the earlier debates over quality and learning. However, a deeper reading of the text and of the global indicators for SDG 4 suggest that this is not the case. As one actor suggested, while the final SDG 4 is ambitious and there is ‘beautiful language’, it missed some important aspects, including any targets on financing of the education agenda (from an interview by K. Moriarty).¹

This chapter will examine the vision of education and education quality that emerges from the SDG 4 process. It will specifically explore the significance of the ‘quality turn’, the renewed focus on quality not only as an overarching goal but embedded in the targets. It will consider whether the broad conceptualisations of quality that emerge from SDG 4 engage with the notion of quality as a dynamic process oriented toward social justice. In particular, it will bring into focus whether the promise of ‘equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all’ advances social justice or whether it remains purely a symbolic policy.

The next section of the chapter discusses the methodology that underpins the analysis. This is followed by a brief contextualisation of the framing of the chapter. Subsequent sections examine SDG 4 in relation to what is meant by education quality and learning, how they are measured and some of the key conditions that are necessary for realising the global education agenda. The conclusion summarises the key arguments of the chapter.

2 Methodology

The analysis and arguments made in this chapter and our contribution to the wider debates on SDG 4 and quality are based on a view that ‘not only is the world socially and historically constructed, but so are people and the knowledge they possess. We operate in and construct our world and our lives on a social, cultural and historical playing field’ (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 2). We argue that the construction of SDG 4 is not neutral; it reflects a particular global social and political context and motivations in which differing social forces seek to make and remake the world.

The data on which this chapter draws includes a detailed engagement with the content, structure, and language of the key policy texts relating to education SDG 4, its targets, and indicators. In particular we focus on the final SDG document as agreed upon at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, as well as relevant education policy texts and statements that preceded that document. We follow Rizvi and Lingard (2010), seeing policy as intertextual. Thus, the analysis of the final SDG 4 document is complemented by analysing other relevant texts that have informed its construction and additional text, such as the global indicators that have shaped its meaning ever since. This includes the UNESCO reports and position papers on education, the consultation reports and documents on education published by UNESCO and UNICEF, and those of the OWG and the 2030 Framework of Education adopted in 2015. The chapter also includes insights selected from interviews with ‘policy elites’ directly engaged at senior levels in formulating the education SDG goal, targets, and indicators from both governmental and nongovernmental backgrounds (Moriarty, 2019). Additionally, reflections from our own separate professional engagement in these processes have also influenced our analysis and the arguments made. Collectively these data offer us an opportunity to deconstruct the beliefs, assumptions, values, and sociopolitical dynamics that have informed the development of SDG 4.

3 Situating the Analysis: Scope and Limits of the Policy Imagination

Policy responds to the cultural, social, political, and economic norms, and, in turn, is shaped by them. Policy is developed within a particular sociopolitical and economic environment, and is the result of political pressure to convert conflict over public goods, such as education, into ‘an authorised course of action concerning their allocation’ (Bell & Stevenson, 2006, pp. 8, 16).

Globalised ideas and ideologies play a fundamental role in the development of policy. Lingard and Rawolle (2011) point to an emergent global education policy field, which they refer to as a ‘rescaling of politics’ developed out of the interaction between global and national policy fields. They conceptualise this rescaling as the relocation of political authority beyond the nation state through a ‘global education policy field’ (Lingard & Rawolle, 2011, p. 490). Verger, Novelli, and Altinyelken (2012) argue that globalised ideas are now dominating to the extent that it is possible to identify a convergence of national policy directions in education that can be referred to as ‘global education policy’. Robertson (2012) provides a very useful separation of the different ways in which global education policy can be understood. These include global as a condition of the world, as discourse, as project, as scale, and as reach. She considers the impact of neoliberalism and changes in technology, a particular social imaginary, as a way of framing education problems and their solutions. She cites EFA as an example, which today is replaced by SDG 4. She argues that these changes were not caused by ‘a global steamroller; rather, the complex reworking, re/bordering and re/ordering of education spaces to include a range of scales of action’ (Robertson, 2012, p. 18), highlighting the geographically situated nature of ‘international’ actors and organisations.

The idea of Westphalian sovereignty, a principle in international law whereby each nation state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, is rendered impotent in processes of policy determination by globalisation and the pervasiveness of the neoliberal economic model. Cultural theorist Mark Fisher suggested that neoliberalism is not only the dominant form of socioeconomic organisation but is in fact the only reality we can imagine (Fisher, 2009). This is the lens through which everything, including education policy, is now framed, as if this were somehow the only natural condition. There is a struggle over the control of this ‘social imaginary’ between ‘a dominant neo-liberal imaginary underpinning educational policy’ and ‘a democratic alternative to it, conceived as a radically different way of interpreting the facts of global interconnectivity and interdependence’ (Rizvi, 2006, p. 200). This struggle is evident in the formulation and content of SDG 4.

In undertaking this analysis, we thus conceive of policy as providing a normative framework to which the international community and nation states should aspire. Untangling the complex discourses and ideological influences shaping the policy decisions that produced SDG4 and its targets is therefore of particular importance to see how the struggles played out, not only in what was and what was not included, but in the conception of what quality education is, what it aims to do, and how it is achieved.

4 The Notion of Quality in SDG 4

There was no mention of quality education in the 1990 Jomtien World Declaration on Education for All, nor in the MDGs (World Conference on Education for All, 1990; UN, 2015a). Quality of education became a stronger focus in the EFA goals (WEF, 2000). Yet the reality is that, in practice, there remained a significant gap. One of the primary reasons identified for this is that the emphasis on access has come at the expense of quality. A major barrier to delivering quality education has been resource constraints – financial, human, and infrastructural. For example, one of the gaps in previous educational goals was the lack of focus on teachers as an important factor for quality. Not only physical access and the number of schools matter but also the quality of the teaching and what people learn (Case & Deaton, 1999; Sayed & Ahmed, 2015). Qualified and motivated teachers are key agents in improving the quality of education (for more detail, see Chapter 10 by Stephanie Bengtsson, Mamusu Kamanda, Joanne Ailwood, and Bilal Barakat).

The notion of quality education gained further policy traction in discussions of the post-2015 framework, partly due to a growing recognition of the ‘global learning crisis’ identified by UNESCO in 2013 (UNESCO, 2013c, 2014f). The recognition of a ‘learning crisis’ was accompanied by an increasing concern in some quarters that what people learn matters and growing evidence that many who access school were not actually learning (Acedo, Adams, and Popa, 2012). We will now explore the theoretical foundation of education generally and educational quality specifically before analysing how quality education is conceptualised and constructed in SDG 4 and its associated targets.

5 Turning Targets into Indicators: The Further Narrowing of the Education Quality Agenda and the Perils of Measurement

In the previous section, we examined conceptions of education quality and learning as they are reflected in the targets. In this section, we consider how indicators and the process of their development frame the ways in which education quality might be realised in the Education 2030 global agenda. We discuss the global shared monitoring frameworks for tracking education progress as these provide a sharper focus of policymakers’ priorities of what success looks like. For details of the classification, see UN (2019).

The measurement of progress for the SDGs overall will theoretically be guided by four levels of indicators: global, regional, thematic, and national. Governments will be accountable to report only on the 11 global education indicators, which represent a boiling down of priorities. The thematic indicators, although broad and comprehensive, will not require the same level of international accountability as the global indicators, and governments will choose their priorities in relation to their national context.

While the development of the SDGs, including SDG 4, was a political process, the development of the global indicators is described as a technical process led by a group of country-level experts, the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs). While the work of the group has been heavily influenced by available data, to refer to the feasibility of data collection and other methodological considerations to portray this as a merely technical process is misleading. The ‘scope and wording of global indicators will, without doubt, have real political significance’ (Moriarty, 2016, p. 124). As with the MDGs, what is measured and reported on will undoubtedly drive action. These are the indicators to which governments will be held accountable; they constitute an ‘agenda inside the agenda’. How these decisions on global indicators were made, by whom, and on what basis requires interrogation as, notwithstanding the challenges, the indicators were not purely derived from available data. One interview informant involved in these processes parodied the discussions thus:

Oh, we can only have one global indicator for 4.1, it’s going to be reading and maths as OECD would like it to be for end of lower secondary because that is what they measure. (Moriarty, 2019, p. 148)

The different levels of indicators proposed are problematic, signalling two parallel processes:

At the moment there are no global indicators on children in or out of schools or completion, no indicator on numbers of children and personally I think this is wrong, we are missing something. … Just as we had for the SDG process this is a parallel process on the indicators, where you have the IAEG that decides on global indicators and the education community that decides on the thematic ones. (Moriarty, 2019, p. 146)

Nevertheless, each technical sector does make inputs into the IAEG-SDGs. The comment above may reflect a sense of disconnection and/or internal divisions within nation states and/or between the two processes of indicator development.

Another policy actor expressed the view that it should be ‘up to national context and resources of the national governments to put in place a system for monitoring this. … [It] will come down to local political contexts (Moriarty, 2019, p. 145).

Developing indicators is not easy as the categorisation of the indicators themselves into three tiers, based on the availability of mechanisms and data for measuring progress highlights (see Chapter 1 by Antonia Wulff for more detail). In addition to the technical challenges, decisions on what indicators are used to measure and track progress are highly political choices, determined by particular views of education’s purpose, and in turn, setting the direction of education, its aims, and functions.

The indicators that have been developed have enabled the prioritisation of some agendas over others. This is perhaps most starkly illustrated by the global indicator for Target 4.1. The global indicator does not attempt to capture key aspects of the target, such as completion of a full cycle of schooling and/or the percentage of those children in free public education. The choice to measure only the ‘proportion of children and young people: (a) in grades 2/3; (b) at the end of primary; and (c) at the end of lower secondary achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex’ (IAEG-SDGs, 2016) is a means to boil down the focus of the target only to learning to read, write, and count. This removes any measure of equity based on free education – a universal human right and central to a broader conception of education quality and learning. Limiting the measurement of learning in this way produces a notion of quantitative effectiveness, which relies on test results to verify effectiveness and quality (Bivens et al., 2009). Such a technicist approach runs the risk of losing sight of the idea that improving learning does not come about by assessment per se or by the frequency of assessment (Sayed & Kanjee, 2013). Children do not learn simply because they are assessed. They learn if assessment information results in changes and improvements in pedagogy. Measurement thus has limited policy purchase if it does not result in improvements in classroom practice. There is also a danger that, in stressing learning outcomes, teachers’ professionalism is undermined by the highly structured learning that such an emphasis on testing often brings. Moreover, test results themselves do not necessarily reflect observed learning outcomes among students (Goldstein, 2004). A key problem with these sets of global indicators is that they do not deal with pedagogy and learning adequately. An exception may be the mainstreaming of the themes of Target 4.7, which are the heart of education quality.

Both the global and thematic indicators have a narrow and reductionist view of learning and pedagogy. For example, the thematic indicators for knowledge, skills, and learning readiness reduce these to the following:

1. Readiness: stimulating home learning environment.

2. Skills: digital literacy.

3. Knowledge: environmental science and geoscience.

Alexander (2015, p. 257) has concerns about how education quality and learning are understood. He states:

Education for the period post-2015 needs a radical and properly informed debate about indicators and measures in relation to the black box, or black hole, of teaching and learning, for classrooms are the true front line in the quest for educational quality. The proper sequence, surely, is not to make do with the odd measure that happens to have featured in a number of school effectiveness studies but to start with a rounded account of the educational process and the purposes it serves, then range comprehensively and eclectically across the full spectrum of relevant research and extrapolate what the evidence shows can safely be regarded as key indicators of quality, and only then proceed to the question of how those indicators that have been shown to have pre-eminent influence on the quality and outcomes of learning can be translated into measures.

Alexander (2015, p. 257) goes on to caution against ‘a single global measure of the quality of teaching applied across all cultural and pedagogical contexts’. On the other hand, the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (Education Commission), established after the adoption of SDG 4 and reflecting a great diversity of actors, argued that ‘to galvanize attention globally, a single global indicator of learning should be agreed on to complement national measures of learning’ (Education Commission, 2016, p. 17).

Reflecting on the process of developing indicators, a senior policy actor interviewed by one of the authors of this chapter made a thoughtful observation: Those who felt that the overarching goal was too broad, and that it required a narrower learning goal, argued that this was achieved through the global indicator process, as ‘certain groups didn’t get the targets they wanted then they pushed for the indicators to pick the part of the target they want’ (Moriarty, 2019, p. 149). Although that view could be regarded as partial, it expresses the sentiment that the choice of indicators was both highly political and hotly contested, especially over what quality education means in practice.

Measurement and assessment constitute a large global industry and perhaps the largest global market in education after textbook production. The assessment and measuring required to monitor progress in SDG 4 are likely to stimulate that industry. This begs the question of who controls the testing market and who stands to gain from an increased focus on the assessment of learning. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if the SDG 4 education agenda focussing on learning and its measurement created a scramble for market shares and deliberately or unwittingly intensified the current privatisation of assessment and testing.

Indicators, including the global indicators, are designed as measures of accountability. Such frameworks require the confidence and trust of those who are implementing them. National governments and, more fundamentally, teachers and schools should therefore be in the driver’s seat in developing measures of accountability that are politically acceptable, professionally sound, and administratively manageable. However, as we noted previously, discussion about indicator development and measurement has been largely treated as a technical exercise and thus avoided discussion about the politics of measurement: who sets the agenda, who monitors, who collects data, who interprets the data, who is to be held accountable and for what. Neglecting such considerations runs the risk of disempowering national education actors (state and nonstate) and citizens who should, in the final instance, be leading the agenda. After all, policy traction and accountability provided by global targets only work if national governments use the information from monitoring progress to put in place education policy reforms to improve education quality.

Understandably, international agencies – and by implication, the national governments with whom they work – have a need to focus on clear, reliable, and measurable targets and indicators to measure learning. Parents and students alike also place value, for a variety of reasons, on measuring progress. This might be because of an understanding of education qualifications as a ‘positional good’ (Hirsch, 1977) or due to a more comprehensive understanding of the value that formative assessment can provide. But there is a real risk that the SDG 4 notion of learning is being narrowed and, like the MDG access agenda, becomes no more than a quest for quantitative measures to show progress. According to Bivens et al. (2009, p. 100), this ‘narrow orientation of education towards the cognitive, the behavioural and ultimately the economistic, manifested through over-reliance on testing and measurement, is disabling its potential to bring about significant change within individuals and within society more widely’.

While SDG 4 in many ways embraces a more expansive education vision than did the MDGs, it remains limited within the confines of a social imaginary that perceives education as a vehicle for economic ends and imposes considerable data burdens on national governments. Moreover, the process of developing indicators reflects a false technicist approach that removes ownership from those who will be required to implement this ambitious agenda. The control of the indicator development agenda is likely to result in a process of monitoring and tracking progress that is outside the ownership of national governments.

6 The Challenge of Realising the Ambitious Global Education Agenda

The SDGs in general and SDG 4 in particular, unlike the previous global agenda, include a focus on implementation. SDG 4 contains targets (4.a, 4.b and 4.c), which are referred to as means of implementation (MOI). We have already referred to one of these relating to teachers in a previous section. In this section, we focus on Target 4.b and more generally the issue of financing, which we consider critical to support quality. We also discuss who or which organisation is to be held accountable for monitoring progress, as well as several conditions necessary for the attainment of SDG 4 and its 10 associated targets.

There is little attention devoted in the SDG 4 text to the international architecture for delivering and managing the process, except for the three ‘means of implementation’ targets. In particular, there is a remarkable silence about how this agenda is to be financed. The Education 2030 Framework for Action does offer this statement of intent:

We emphasize that international public finance plays an important role in complementing the efforts of countries to mobilize public resources domestically, especially in the poorest and most vulnerable countries with limited domestic resources. An important use of international public finance, including official development assistance (ODA), is to catalyse additional resource mobilization from other sources, public and private. ODA providers reaffirm their respective commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance (ODA/GNI) to developing countries and 0.15 per cent to 0.2 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries. (WEF, 2015, para. 43)

Despite strong advocacy leading up to the adoption of the SDG framework, there is no specific target or goal relating to financing SDG 4, unlike the EFA framework for action, which stated that ‘no countries seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by a lack of resources’ (World Education Forum, 2000, p. 9). This omission speaks volumes about the declining commitment of the international community, which has driven the SDG process, to support national governments in achieving the goals and targets set.

The financing aspects of the sustainable development agenda were dealt with separately in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, adopted shortly before the SDGs themselves in 2015 (UNGA, 2015a). Some may argue that SDG 4 did not need a target on financing, although the Addis Agenda contains very limited financing commitments to education. This however, is not the whole story. SDG Target 3.c, one of the health goals’ MOI targets, does call on governments to ‘substantially increase health financing’ (UNGA, 2015b, p. 17).

The only references to financing education are in the MOI targets 4.b and 4.c, which refer to scholarships for higher education and financial support for teacher training. They fall short of a more robust commitment to education financing targets. They also ignore the call by the African Union for a specific higher education/university target, as opposed to scholarships, for higher education (Sayed & Ahmed, 2011).

The Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted after the final SDG 4 text, does seek to address this weakness, and the World Education Forum in May 2015 also highlighted the need for education finance (World Education Forum, 2015). However, the absence of a financing target in SDG 4 can arguably be read alongside a policy discourse in the SDG framework as a whole, which constructs a positive role for the private sector in delivering public goods, from contributing resources to direct delivery. In its construction, the SDG policy framework intentionally or inadvertently elevates the private sector as an equal partner and stakeholder in realising and protecting human rights. The question that must be asked is whether the self-interest and utility-maximising behaviour of the private sector can be harnessed to the benefit of the public sector.

A key policy text, which provides guidance for the implementation of SDG 4 is the Education 2030 Framework for Action. That document spells out various approaches and strategies for implementing SDG 4. The Incheon Declaration, which promulgated the Framework for Action, states:

We reaffirm that the fundamental responsibility for successfully implementing this agenda lies with governments. We are determined to establish legal and policy frameworks that promote accountability and transparency as well as participatory governance and coordinated partnerships at all levels and across sectors, and to uphold the right to participation of all stakeholders. (World Education Forum, 2015, p. 9)

While laying the central responsibility for accountability at the foot of government, it does beg the question of what the role of the various sectors and actors, including international agencies, is in monitoring progress. It leaves vague how different actors will be held to account and by whom.

Finally, the realisation of this education agenda requires an approach to implementation that emphasises historic and structural inequities in promoting education quality. SDG 4 discourse, which brings both education quality and equity to the fore, must be buttressed at the level of implementation by political will and financial investments.

7 Conclusion

This chapter focussed on how the global education agenda articulated in SDG 4 reflects education quality and learning. We have argued that this turn to education quality, while echoing earlier global agendas, represents a shift in focus and attention to learning as opposed to access to education.

We have pointed to some of the key conceptual limitations of how education quality is conceived in the SDG 4 goal and embedded in the 10 associated targets. In particular this chapter emphasises that the concept of quality education and learning is narrowed and reduced in instrumental ways that reduce its potential reach and impact. We argue that while a shift to the ‘affective’ is marked by the inclusion of Target 4.7, the lumping together of so many topics renders it inoperative, with the risk that it becomes a residual target. The failure to describe the learning in Target 4.7 as relevant or effective creates a hierarchy of learning, where human rights education – a legal obligation – is seen as less important than other areas. We argue that in SDG 4, the neglect of curricula and inclusion of teachers in the framework as a ‘technical education input’ reduces their agency and limits the potential of the ‘quality turn’.

SDG 4 and its targets lead to a form of pseudo-technicism whereby a narrow set of indicators are axiomatically assumed to measure equitable and quality lifelong learning for all. In so doing, rights-based understandings of quality, including inclusive and child-centred pedagogy, interactive teaching and learning processes in the classroom, a curriculum that encourages critical thinking, and respect for and understanding of human rights, which many observers, including the authors, feel better measure quality and learning, are marginalised and delegitimised. Education quality is discursively constituted as instrumental and, once again, devoid of any understanding of the teaching and learning process.

Despite our critique, we do believe that the insertion of equity and education quality in the global development goals represents a welcome change in the global agenda and a sober response to a narrow focus on physical access that characterised the previous MDGs. However, for the ‘quality turn’ to be realised in practice, a set of necessary conditions is required that acknowledges a vision of education quality in which the focus on the affective is valued along with the cognitive. This education quality turn implies rethinking the indicators and refining the targets at the level of implementation such that a holistic, reflexive, and critical vision of education is promoted. Further this necessitates an approach to education financing and accountability that privileges the need of the poor and marginalised through quality public education. Such a vision of education is consistent with a rights-based approach to implementing SDG 4 (Moriarty, 2017). Only in this way can the 5P mantra of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership, articulated in the wider 2030 agenda for sustainable development, be realised. And only in fully embracing a rights-based vision of the ‘quality turn’ can SDG 4 contribute to social justice and redistribution of privilege and wealth in and through education. Without such a vision, the ideal of ‘equitable and quality lifelong learning for all’ will remain illusory and unattainable.