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Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4

In 2015, all countries committed to achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Education International played a critical role in securing a stand-alone goal for education - Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4): Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Significantly, SDG4 recognised that quality education can only be delivered by qualified teachers.

However, at the current pace, governments will fail to achieve SDG 4. The COVID-19 pandemic poses additional challenges, and risks reversing years of progress on education. Urgent and decisive action is imperative.

Together with our member organisations around the world we are working to ensure that governments live up to their promise to achieve SDG 4 and all its targets by 2030.

  • We monitor progress and hold governments accountable.
  • We advocate for enhanced domestic financing for public education through fair and progressive taxation and international aid.
  • We oppose corporate interests that treat education as a market instead of a public good accessible to all.
  • We promote quality education that is free from violence, develops the “whole child”, builds tolerance, understanding, democracy, respect for human rights and active citizenship for sustainable development.
  • We promote the achievement of the “teacher target” (target 4.c), underlining every students’ right to be taught by a trained and qualified teacher.

Our work in this area

  1. News 26 October 2022

    Francophone education unions want to put governments back on track to achieve quality education

    The Comité syndical francophone de l'éducation et de la formation (CSFEF), which brings together trade union representatives of French-speaking organisations affiliated to Education International, held its 18th CSFEF meeting in Hammamet, Tunisia, from 13 to 15 October. The debates focused, among other things, on the conditions for trade union activity,...

    Francophone education unions want to put governments back on track to achieve quality education
  2. News 25 October 2022

    Ghana: Campaign against privatisation and commercialisation of education

    The multi- education union initiative aims to counter privatisation and its harmful impact on education

    Taking stock of results achieved, member organisations of the Campaign Against the Privatisation and Commercialisation of Education (CAPCOE) have deplored an expanding privatisation of education – especially at basic level – in Ghana’s remote areas, they welcomed the teacher’s higher level of training as well as the reduction of the...

    Ghana: Campaign against privatisation and commercialisation of education
  3. Worlds of Education 25 October 2022

    Teachers, not computers, are the beating heart of education

    Susan Hopgood

    More than 130 countries committed to prioritise education at the United Nation’s Transforming Education Summit (TES), a global meeting of Heads of State held in September in New York.

    Teachers, not computers, are the beating heart of education
  4. Worlds of Education 14 October 2022

    Public-Private Partnerships at no cost to the State & to Society – Is this possible?

    Carolina Finette

    In this blog post, I share my personal trajectory as a teacher experiencing Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the Brazil countryside and urge stakeholders to reflect on the problems involving such partnerships to education. In addition, I reflect on how such PPPs are a result of the lack of financing in...

    Public-Private Partnerships at no cost to the State & to Society – Is this possible?
  5. News 13 October 2022

    Ethiopia: Trade union demands de-escalation of military hostilities and continued humanitarian assistance

    In a press statement to local media, the Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA), affiliated to Education International officially called for de-escalation of conflict and an immediate return to cessation of hostilities in the wake of the resumption of militarised hostilities between federal defense forces and forces of the Tigray regional government....

    Ethiopia: Trade union demands de-escalation of military hostilities and continued humanitarian assistance
  6. Statements 3 October 2022

    Teachers around the world deserve more than thanks, governments must listen

    An open letter from the profession on World Teachers’ Day

    As teachers we believe that, despite the global crises facing the world, the power and optimism inherent in education will always provide hope for our future. We also know that to move forward from this pandemic, and the deepening inequities it exposed, we need to fully fund public education systems...

    Teachers around the world deserve more than thanks, governments must listen
  7. Worlds of Education 3 October 2022

    Teachers are the beating heart of education

    David Edwards

    This is a crucial moment. COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on education. At the height of the pandemic, 1.6 billion students were out of school. Millions are still not in their classrooms, others are struggling with trauma and loss. As the economic crisis, the climate emergency, and wars intensify...

    Teachers are the beating heart of education
  8. News 29 September 2022

    World Teachers’ Day 2022: We transform education

    On September 19 world leaders met at the United Nations and committed to transforming education everywhere. Teachers are at the heart of this transformation; they must be trusted and supported to make quality public education a reality for all students.

    World Teachers’ Day 2022: We transform education
  9. Worlds of Education 22 September 2022

    Education: the challenges ahead

    Eirick Prairat

    In his latest book, L'école des Lumières brille toujours (ESF 2022), Eirick Prairat presents the major challenges ahead for education. In this article, he discusses two relatively recent ones that have appeared in the last two decades: the post-truth challenge and urgent issues concerning our way of life. He also...

    Education: the challenges ahead
  10. Worlds of Education 18 September 2022

    Teachers are ready to transform education — it’s time for governments to step up

    David Edwards

    Despite the global crises facing the world, the power and optimism inherent in education will always provide hope for our future. To move forward from this pandemic, and the deepening inequities it exposed, we need to transform education by fully funding public education systems and investing in, supporting, and respecting...

    Teachers are ready to transform education — it’s time for governments to step up
  11. News 15 September 2022

    World leaders meet to transform education at global summit

    The critically important role of governments as guarantors and providers of free quality public education for all has never been clearer. The United Nation’s Transforming Education Summit (TES) a global meeting of Heads of State to focus on education, will take place on 19 September in New York. The TES...

    World leaders meet to transform education at global summit
  12. Worlds of Education 8 September 2022

    The unheard impact: technology and the teaching profession

    Lainie Keper

    Education International (EI) recently hosted a consultation event to provide feedback into the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology and education.

    The unheard impact: technology and the teaching profession
  13. Worlds of Education 30 August 2022

    Recovering indigenous names

    Kantuta Conde

    My name is Kantuta, and I am proud to have an Aymara name that identifies me and represents my community. When it rained, my grandmother told me that children who die without a name go to Tata Granizo. Next to him, children make round ice that falls from the sky...

    Recovering indigenous names
  14. Worlds of Education 23 August 2022

    Adapting to Covid-19: Removing the land from indigenous land-based education

    Sydney Krill

    "That’s what the elders are telling us. Go out on the land. This is a perfect time for people to show youngsters how to build a fire in the morning, how to put up a tent. It’s almost spring. If people can get their families out on the land, that’s...

    Adapting to Covid-19: Removing the land from indigenous land-based education
  15. Worlds of Education 16 August 2022

    Ending Ability Grouping to empower Māori learners in Aotearoa New Zealand

    Liam Rutherford

    Variously practiced as ‘ability grouping’, ‘streaming’, ‘attainment grouping’, ‘setting’, ‘banding’ or ‘tracking’, pedagogical practices that group students based on perceived ability or prior achievement are longstanding and widespread world over. Research, however, has long shown that this has negative impacts for students, especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, ethnic minorities,...

    Ending Ability Grouping to empower Māori learners in Aotearoa New Zealand
  16. News 9 August 2022

    Mali: Alarming situation in schools under attack from armed groups

    More than 1,800 schools in Mali have closed following attacks or direct threats from armed groups. These groups kidnap teachers, set fire to schools and school materials, and start shooting during lessons. Moustapha Guitteye, General Secretary of the Syndicat National de l’Éducation et la Culture (SNEC), recently went to the...

    Mali: Alarming situation in schools under attack from armed groups
  17. Worlds of Education 9 August 2022

    Including Indigenous identities and ways of knowing in education and science

    Charitie Ropati

    Engineers and scientists are vital to meeting Sustainable Development Goals but the ecological knowledge that Indigenous people hold when we care for the land are things that are central to the existence of life.

    Including Indigenous identities and ways of knowing in education and science