Quality Education

By 2027, all children and young people, especially the most vulnerable, have equitable access to quality learning and skills development within safe and inclusive education environments.

The Outcome Group 3 is aligned with accelerating progress towards SDG 4, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Through OG3, the UN supports the government in boosting the capacity to deliver 21st-century and life skills, digital literacy, financial literacy, and environmental literacy. A major focus is on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in early childhood education and developing foundational literacy and numeracy for young children (aged 3–10 years), particularly those in the most vulnerable communities. The underlying principles guiding the actions are gender equality and leaving no one behind.

Challenges

• Bridging gaps in learning outcomes and raising proficiency levels

• Ensuring learning recovery from pandemic school-closures

• Closing the digital learning divide

• Ensuring student retention and transition from primary to secondary education

• Closing the employability-skills gap

• Increasing the number of trained teachers

The UN system’s contribution to Outcome 3 focuses on:

• Increasing the capacity of the government for evidence-based planning and implementation of programmes for equitable access to quality learning and twenty-first-century and life skills,

• Increasing the capacity of the government for equitable access to quality learning and twenty-first-century and life skills for children and adolescents, especially the most vulnerable, and

• Improving access to and demand for quality tertiary education.

UN development support and partnerships to achieve Outcome 3

The UN system contributes to evidence-based planning and implementation to deliver gender-sensitive, shock-responsive, inclusive and equitable quality education that includes strengthening the capacity to deliver digital, financial, environmental and foundational literacy.

It focuses on quality teaching and learning in the areas of early childhood education and foundational literacy and numeracy for all young children (aged 3–10 years), especially for those belonging to the most vulnerable communities. It supports interventions in quality teaching and learning, including imparting twenty-first-century skills and life skills for adolescents (11-18-year-olds), especially those belonging to the most vulnerable groups. Its contribution towards quality tertiary education focuses on providing technical support for improved equitable access.

Leave No One Behind focus: 

The UN system’s interventions focus on children and young people, particularly those from vulnerable groups—girls, adolescent girls and young women, sexual minorities, SC and ST communities, PwDs, refugees and asylum seekers and other marginalized and vulnerable groups.

Synergies with government schemes and programmes:

National Education Policy 2020, Samagra Shiksha, School Health and Welfare Programme, NIPUN Bharat, Rashtriya Uchchattar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA)