This timely and important document outlines how countries can prepare for the expansion of educational opportunity through financial, managerial and systemic investments.
The Education Commission report echoes many priorities that are important to IIEP, including bolstering learning outcomes, extending the right to a quality education to all refugee and internally displaced children and youth, employer-led innovations, and improving the tracking of educational financial flows to understand how education is funded and by whom.
"This eagerly awaited report contains thoughtful analyses of existing research and can be expected to influence global debates and strategic directions for some time to come. IIEP is eager to take forward a number of the recommendations”, said Suzanne Grant Lewis, IIEP Director.
Creating a learning generation
Getting all children in school and learning within one generation is possible, according to the Education Commission. To achieve this, it will require reforms and investment that will get every child on track to enter school by 2030, and increase the number of qualified high school graduates in low- and middle-income countries from 400 million to 850 million by 2030.
But not only must the number of school enrolments increase. At IIEP, we are working towards ensure learning is a major focus in the planning cycle so children are not only attending school, but are learning in school.
The IIEP Learning Portal, which features over 1,200 resources related to learning, is available to help decision-makers and educational planners integrate the best methods for improving learning outcomes into their planning cycle.
Discover this platform here.
Extending education to the world’s most vulnerable
Only one in two refugee children attend primary school, while just one in four attend secondary school. This represents a major crisis, compounded by inadequate international financing for education in emergencies.
Conflict and instability remain a major cause of girls and boys being out of school or not learning. Sixty-three million out-of-school children and youth live in conflict-affected areas. Education Commission report
Urgent action is needed, and governments, development and humanitarian partners must set out clear expectations to plan education with and for refugees and internally displaced persons.
Join our upcoming e-Forum from 3-14 October on this pressing issue and discover our platform, Education for Safety, Resilience, and Social Cohesion. 
Employer-led innovation
The 2030 Education agenda offers great potential for employer-led innovation and mechanisms that give civil society and private-sector organizations a voice in education.
The Platform of Expertise in Vocational Training for Africa that IIEP - Pôle de Dakar launched in November last year advances this area of work. PEFOP supports the implementation and reform of operational vocational training policies through the involvement of public and private actors.
Improving the tracking of educational financial flows
For many countries, data and analysis on how much money is spent on education, where funding comes from and how it is used is scarce. To reach a Learning Generation, the Education Commission underlines the importance of national tracking of education expenditure from system to school level. National education accounts (NEAs) should be published, the report says, as part of all country's data infrastructure to facilitate improvements in efficiency.
Since 2013, IIEP and its Pôle de Dakar, along with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and with support from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), has worked on an international project to help countries develop NEAs for education transformation.
"At this time of Public Finance reforms, especially in the Economic Community of West Africa and the ASEAN states, NEAs will be an indispensable tool for the Ministries of Education to measure the performance of the budgetary programmes approved by parliaments, and to monitor the efficiency of their public expenditure'', said Ousmane Diouf, IIEP Programme Specialist.
Read our blog on GPE on how NEAs are already helping to spur change in Lao PDR, Senegal and Uganda.
Methodological guidelines are also to be released so countries worldwide can replicate the process of creating and updating a NEA. More information to come soon!
