Event highlights: UNESCO Global Education Meeting 2024 – Governance of and Leadership in Education

On 1 November 2024, Dr Moira Faul, Executive Director of NORRAG, participated in a panel with teachers, education experts, and government representatives titled ‘Governance of and Leadership in Education: Education 2030 Framework for Action.’ The panel was organized under the framework of the 2024 UNESCO Global Education Meeting, which took place in Fortaleza, Brazil, between 31 October and 1 November 2024.  

Mr Gwang-Chol Chang, Chief of Section of Education Policy at UNESCO, began the event with an overview of the areas of focus that governments should emphasize as they strengthen state capacity – the ability of states to implement policies – to improve education. They include:

• Consistency and coherence: Capacity building is a process that requires a shared vision that is built together with all stakeholders. This is pivotal to ensure the process continues beyond potential government changes.
• Confidence and trust: Government systems work also thanks to critical actors who stay regardless of government changes. Trust between these persistent figures and government actors is essential to remain consistent in education reform.  
• Contextualization: States and institutions must acknowledge that general one-fits-all solutions do not work in education policy and governance. More research must be conducted targeting evidence and solutions that can be locally adaptable. 

The event proceeded with a presentation on the role of data in governance, state capacity, and leadership by Ms Yuri Belfali, Head of Division, Early Childhood and Schools at OECD. Data was defined as a tool to empower leaders, guide their thinking, and bring people together around evidence-based observations. To maximize the value of data, governments need to focus on three areas:  

• Availability of data: More data collection is needed concerning different aspects of children’s learning processes, including students’ learning outcomes, well-being, gender, and socio-economic background. 
• Analysis of data: We need to understand better how and why students perform the way they do, analyzing data to evaluate, for example, the effects of motivation and confidence on students’ outcomes. 
• Use of data: Educators should use data to guide their decision-making and implement the best solutions. Data can help educators effectively target students in need and improve their learning process. Doing so can also help governments allocate resources more effectively without necessarily implementing systemic reforms.  

Concluding the panel, Dr Moira Faul provided insights into how to approach and monitor partnerships’ effectiveness. Dr Faul emphasized that creating partnerships is not a solution in itself. They are complex systems, and the collaboration process matters the most in achieving lasting results. Research undertaken by Prof Andonova and Dr Faul identifies the following questions for organizations to consider when working together:  

• What is the external influence of the partnership? Organizations engaged in partnerships must assess the effect and influence their work can have outside of their collaboration, including on institutions and organizations working on education policy (e.g., GPE, governments, UNESCO).  
• What is the impact on the affected population? Organizations should evaluate whether their proposed solutions result in inclusive, equitable, and context-relevant education and development. Target populations are not all affected equally. Students’ gender, ethnicity, family financial background, or home location, when they intersect, have varied effects on their ability to access education. Partnerships need to take these intersections of marginalization into account when producing solutions.  
• How are partners collaborating? Organizations need to ensure that partnership dynamics are equal and productive, and felt to be equal and productive, by all partners. This requires dominant organizations to promote equal collaboration actively. Power dynamics should not obfuscate the final goals or processes of the collaboration.  
• How do we create value for ourselves and our partners? While value creation is normal in a partnership, and while partners may hold separate and diverging values, organizations must ensure that their solution is positive for affected populations.  
• What are our goals? Partners must be clear about the specific goals they want to achieve together, and that these are relevant to the problem and population they seek to address. They must also devise means to measure the goal achievement process. But they must not focus on partnership goals only, and ignore the other questions raised above. 

Panellists: 

• Mr Gwang-Chol Chang, Chief of Section of Education Policy, UNESCO  
• Ms Yuri Belfali, Head of Division, Early Childhood and Schools, OECD 
• Ms Moira Faul, Executive Director, NORRAG 
• Mr Mauricio Holanda Maia, Secretariat for Intersectoral Coordination and Education Systems (SASE), Education Ministry, Brazil 
• Mr José Weinstein, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile