Data availability for the calculation of SDG 4-Education 2030 indicators: analysis covering Latin America and the Caribbean

As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Education 2030 Framework for Action adopted by UN Member States, there is a commitment to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4). Working towards this goal, a group of education indicators was proposed in order to measure progress in countries. The establishment of a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) led to the formulation of these thematic indicators, designed to report on the compliance with each SDG 4 target and to also shed light on the progress made by all countries and regions towards inclusive and equitable education, as well as greater opportunities for the entire population. The selection of indicators to monitor SDG 4 targets of the Education 2030 Agenda was based on previously agreed-upon criteria and designed to fulfil specific requirements. In line with its mandate, the TAG has focused on indicators are internationally comparable. The TAG proposed an initial group of 43 thematic indicators based on the availability, relevance and feasibility of data. Within this group, 11 indicators (one for each target, with the exception of Target 2, for which two global indicators were defined) were proposed by the Inter-agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs, http://unstats.un.org/sdgs/iaeg-sdgs/), and agreed upon by the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSD), to be among the thematic indicators monitoring the SDG 4–Education 2030 agenda. There is an increasing need for a diagnosis of data availability in Latin American and Caribbean countries for the calculation of the thematic indicators to monitor SDG 4. With this objective, a consultation was done in the countries of the region through a self-administered questionnaire that assessed data availability for the new education agenda and identified the need for support to countries for collecting education data. This report includes an analysis of the results gathered from this consultation process, as well as the main observations and conclusions drawn from it.