Transforming Education in Asia and the Pacific

Transforming education in the Asia-Pacific region must consider its vast diversity and large population, characterized by rapid economic growth, innovation, and an increasing number of middle-income countries. Despite these advancements, significant disparities persist within and between countries, with economic gains not always translating into better living standards for all. These inequalities are widening, exacerbated by challenges like demographic shifts, labor mobility, environmental issues, and conflicts. In education, while access has improved remarkably at primary and lower secondary levels, major disparities in equity and quality remain. Completion rates, particularly at the upper secondary level, are low in many countries, and less than half of the students in the region are proficient in fundamental subjects like reading and math, indicating a profound learning crisis that needs urgent attention.

Introduction

Transforming Education and its Systems in the Asia-Pacific region has to be seen against the backdrop of its great diversity and its large population. The region is characterized by rapid and dynamic economic growth, a growing number of middle-income countries, innovation and technological advances. However, these overall economic trends belie vast disparities between and within countries, and economic growth has not necessarily resulted in equivalent increases in living standards everywhere. Trends show that these gaps are widening, rather than narrowing, and are compounded by a diversity of challenges such as demographic change, with huge youth bulges in some contexts and a rapidly aging population in others, increased labour mobility and migration, environmental degradation and natural disasters, as well as continuing conflicts in parts of the region.

In education, the region has made great progress in access and participation in education, especially at primary and lower secondary levels, with more than 97% of primary and 90% of lower secondary-age children enrolled (UIS, 2020), but there are persistent disparities among and within countries, in particular in equity and the quality of education. Completion is a major challenge, especially at upper secondary level -in half of the countries in the region, less than 40% of adolescents complete the cycle (UIS, 2020). Asregards learning achievement, in half of the countries of the region less than 56% of students are proficient in reading at all levels, and less than 50% in math (UIS, 2019), indicating a major learning crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption of education globally and in the region, severely impacting education delivery, learning outcomes, student engagement, health and well-being. This affected vulnerable learners the most, and resulted in a significant setback in progress towards achieving SDG 4. Overall, while the situation is diverse between and within countries of the region, the pandemic not only exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in access to education and learning achievement, but exposed significant existing weaknessesin the quality and relevance of education and the overall fragility of education systems.

As a first and immediate action, countries should prioritize learning recovery, ‘to prevent this generation of students from suffering permanent losses in their learning and future productivity, and to protect their ability to participate fully in society’¹. Here, as spelt out in the R.A.P.I.D. Learning Recovery Framework, jointly developed by UNICEF, UNESCO and The World Bank, (UNICEF, 2022),² the focus should be to: 1. Reach and retain every child; 2. Assess learning levels; 3. Prioritize teaching the fundamentals; 4. Increase catch-up learning; and 5. Develop psychosocial health and well-being. At the same time, these immediate and urgent actions should go hand in hand with the development of broader strategies to address the learning crisis, in a longer-term perspective of transforming education systems.

Beyond recovery, the crisis revealed the urgent need to rethink and transform education systems,to become resilient to withstand future shocks, as well as more equitable, inclusive, relevant and flexible. In this way, systems will ensure learning and well-being for all and better respond to shifting learning and training requirements as well as deliver on SDG4 commitments.

Transforming education: what learning is needed in Asia-Pacific in the future?

In order to transform education systems in relevant ways, there needs to be a reflection on what education we want for the future in the Asia Pacific region. To this end, the recent UNESCO Futures of Education Report³invites governments and education stakeholders globally to rethink and reimagine the purpose, content and delivery of education, with a view to transforming the goals of education toward achieving peaceful, inclusive and sustainable futures of humanity and the planet. It aims at responding to the significant current challenges of “growing social fragmentation, democratic backsliding, the crisis of climate change, and growing exclusion” and calls for a new social contract for education to face our common challenges. It identifies five main areas for transformation: pedagogies, curricula, the teaching profession, schools, and the creation of a learning eco-system. The report is not in itself a blueprint for educational reform, but rather a basis for reflection and debate about the choices that should be made in formulating policies. The vision, principles and proposals contained in the Futures of Education Reportand the report of the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agendaare also guiding the thematic action tracks to be discussed in the upcoming Transforming Education Summit.⁴

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