Rethinking schooling: annual report 2018

Calls to gear up schools for the 21st century are ubiquitous today. Some Asian education systems are held up as models for an innovation-led utopian future. Across much of Asia, however, neither the reality of schooling nor the patterns of development with which it is associated give cause for blithe optimism. This study is informed by UNESCO’s commitment to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through educational reform worldwide. Since its inception, UNESCO has championed a humanistic vision of education (UNESCO, 2015)—a vision today encapsulated in SDG 4.7. These ideals need to be strongly restated and defended in an era when educational debate has come to be framed by a narrowly economistic and instrumentalist agenda. Deriving urgent significance from this broader context, the Rethinking Schooling report analyses how far the ideals of SDG 4.7 are embodied in policies and curricula across 22 Asian countries (UNESCO MGIEP, 2017a). The report seeks to develop benchmarks against which future progress can be assessed. It also argues forcefully that the fundamental purposes of schooling need to be reconfigured, if the ideals to which the global community has subscribed are actually to be realized.