Recognizing that education is a foundation for peace, tolerance, human rights and sustainable development and responding to the focus on leaving no one behind in the Political Declaration on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the Secretary-General announced in his report on Our Common Agenda his intention to convene a Transforming Education Summit (TES) in September 2022.

The Summit is being convened in the context of two dramatic and deeply interconnected challenges to ensuring quality education and lifelong learning for all. First, our world is experiencing a global learning crisis that is depriving hundreds of millions of children and young people of their right to quality education, leaving many of the education-related targets of the SDGs well off track. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of effective measures for learning recovery risks turning this crisis into a generational catastrophe, especially for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Second, the learning crisis is part of a broader challenge relating to the ability of conventional education systems to deliver the knowledge, skills and outlooks needed for children, young people and adults to excel in today’s world and contribute to sustainable, healthy and peaceful futures. In the context of a global climate crisis, rapid technological change, profound changes in the world of work, lower levels of trust in public institutions, the erosion of democratic values and the rise of disinformation, intolerance and hate speech, UNESCO’s landmark report on the futures of education noted that ‘far too often, formal learning does not meet the needs and aspirations of children and youth and their communities’.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the Transforming Education Summit provides an opportunity to mobilize greater political ambition, commitment, and action to reverse the slide on SDG 4, reimagine education, and accelerate progress on education and the 2030 Agenda more broadly for the remainder of the Decade of Action.

Find out more about the Transforming Education Summit and the events leading up to it on the Transforming Education Knowledge Hub.