About Ministerial Meeting of Education ―Santiago 2024―
The Ministerial Meeting of Education – Santiago 2024 – takes place convened by the Ministry of Education of Chile and UNESCO, and the co-organization of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), the World Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and UNICEF

From commitments to action
At the event, there will be reflections and identification of good practices in relation to the financing of education as an enabling condition. As a result of this meeting, it is expected to generate the necessary inputs to configure a regional framework of reference on public policies for the reactivation, recovery, and transformation of education.
The call for the Ministerial Meeting of Education - Santiago 2024 aims to capitalize on the significant social mobilization generated at the Summit on the Transformation of Education (TES) to move from commitments to action. In this meeting, the ministers will share good practices, progress, strengths, opportunities, challenges, difficulties, and setbacks in the field of public policies for the recovery, transformation, and financing of education.
This event responds to the regional educational context, marked by both structural and systemic aspects, as well as situational ones, that demand deepening joint efforts and advancing in processes of educational integration, taking advantage of the more than 60 years of regional cooperation and multilateralism in the field of education in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Structure of the Discussion
The Ministerial Meeting will have three sessions:
- Financing
- Educational Reactivation and Recovery, and
- Transformation of Education.
In the initial session, dedicated to education financing, the dialogue will center around this crucial and essential factor for both the reactivation and recovery, as well as for the transformative process in education. To develop this session, an invitation was extended to the Ministers of Finance or Economy to initiate a comprehensive and balanced regional dialogue around the challenge of the financial sustainability of educational systems in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Subsequently, the session on reactivation and recovery will address strategies, policies, and programs that are underway to improve fundamental learning, school reintegration, socio-emotional well-being, and other variables that countries are developing to overcome the crisis derived from the health emergency.
However, as demonstrated in several studies, it is not possible to achieve the goals of SDG 4 giving little relevance to the topic. It is necessary for the educational systems to enter a logic of transformation to achieve quality, inclusive, and equitable education throughout life. In this sense, the third session proposes to delve into strategies, policies, and support programs for teachers, educational innovation, and digital learning as catalysts for the transformation of education.
Each session will be developed in three stages:
- Inputs for discussion: This section will present key ideas, data, and evidence in a concise and agile manner to contextualize and focus the ministers' discussion on the proposed topic.
- Rounds of conversation between ministers: A forum where those responsible for public education policy in each country will engage in dialogue about the strategies, policies, and programs they are implementing to accelerate the achievement of SDG4. Ministers will discuss key aspects, challenges, and opportunities related to the actions they are implementing to finance, reactivate, recover, and transform education. This dialogue will emphasize the results they hope to achieve and those they are already achieving. Moreover, the ministers will identify key principles and articulating elements for the achievement of effective and relevant policies in financing, reactivation, recovery, and educational transformation, adapted to the region's reality. These elements will be gathered as conclusions in each session and will be a key input for advancing the development of a regional reference framework on public policies for the reactivation, recovery, and transformation of education.
- Educational exhibition: This space is designed to share the experiences and best practices of countries in reactivating, recovering, and transforming education. In the months leading up to the meeting, a process of identifying and selecting best practices was carried out, allowing countries to present their experiences in at least one of the ministerial meeting sessions. Using audiovisual and interactive media, and with the support of a structured guideline, the experiences will be presented at stands, which will include information on implementation, achievements, critical points, challenges, and selected initiatives.
The Education Ministerial Meeting - Santiago 2024 will have a session in which the conclusions from the previous three sessions will be integrated to progress in establishing a regional framework of reference on public policies for reactivation, recovery, and educational transformation. Additionally, there will be a consensus on the Declaration of the Extraordinary Meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Results of the Regional Coordination in Education
Latin America and the Caribbean have developed the Regional Coordination Mechanism for Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), a technical-political dialogue platform created to deepen educational cooperation efforts that support countries on their journey to achieve the SDG 4 targets. This mechanism, established in 2018, is led by the ministers of education of the 33 countries in the region and is supported by the Regional Steering Committee (RSC) and UNESCO, which acts as the Executive Secretariat. The RSC is composed of eleven Member States, representatives of the subregions of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, and nine regional organizations working in the field of education (OEI, OAS, CECC-SICA, CARICOM, CLADE, Education International, and UNICEF).
The call for the Ministerial Meeting of Education – Santiago 2024 is part of this active, participatory, and dynamic multilateral instance, which defined the commitments for recovery and educational transformation in the to accelerate the achievement of the SDG4 targets and mobilized the region's participation in the TES Summit. Thus, the RSC proposed in its 2022-2025 Work Plan the Ministerial Meeting of Education – Santiago 2024 as a milestone in political and technical dialogue.