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The world is a third of the way towards the deadline of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the fourth Sustainable Development Goal on education, SDG 4. But it is behind on its commitments. This joint publication by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report for the 2019 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development captures concisely how far the world is from achieving its education targets.

This is the year that the generation of students that should finish secondary school by 2030 should be entering school for the first time. Yet, in low-income countries, only 60% of children complete primary school, while in some regions the percentage of students who achieve minimum proficiency in reading is even falling. There is no denying that the world is off track. It is time to put an end to complacency.

The international community relies on data to report on the SDG 4 monitoring framework to assess progress. While clear improvements have been made in data collection, data gaps remain a major concern. This publication makes a call for countries and their international development partners to coordinate and finance the collection of data to monitor and deliver on SDG 4.