Resources
Explore a wide range of valuable resources on GCED to deepen your understanding and enhance your research, advocacy, teaching, and learning.
133 Results found
Building Strong Foundations: What is Foundational Education for Health and Well-being? (Brief 1) Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) In a rapidly changing world, establishing strong foundations for children is vital for their well-being and resilience. Quality education is central to this endeavour and is the key to lifelong health and success. Recognizing that children thrive in the classroom when they are in good health, it is crucial to learn about health and well-being early on in primary schools. The Building strong foundations briefs, developed jointly by UNESCO and UNICEF, provide evidence-based guidance to support primary school-aged children to thrive through foundational education for health and well-being. Drawing from extensive research and consultations with leading experts from various fields and across the world, these briefs serve as a roadmap for education stakeholders to equip learners with the requisite knowledge and skills to navigate their current and future health and well-being needs. This document is the first of four briefs. It provides an overview of the essential role that primary schools play in enhancing health and well-being. The document outlines what foundational refers to, why it is important for health and education, and how it contributes to paving the way for healthier, inclusive and thriving societies. The brief shares compelling evidence and case studies to distill six essential elements for an effective whole-school approach to health and well-being. 
Building Strong Foundations: How to Include the Whole School in Foundational Education for Health and Well-being (Building Strong Foundations Brief; 3) Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) In a rapidly changing world, establishing strong foundations for children is vital for their well-being and resilience. Quality education is central to this endeavour and is the key to lifelong health and success. Recognizing that children thrive in the classroom when they are in good health, it is crucial to learn about health and well-being early on in primary schools. The Building Strong Foundations briefs, developed jointly by UNESCO and UNICEF, provide evidence-based guidance to support primary school-aged children to thrive through foundational education for health and well-being. Drawing from extensive research and consultations with leading experts from various fields and across the world, these briefs serve as a roadmap for education stakeholders to equip learners with the requisite knowledge and skills to navigate their current and future health and well-being needs. The present document is the third of four briefs. It explores how a whole-school approach to health and well-being in primary schools generates significant impacts on learners’ health, well-being and education. The brief shares practical guidance and case studies to distill six essential elements for an effective whole-school approach to health and well-being. 
Building Strong Foundations: How to Put Foundational Education for Health and Well-being into Practice (Building Strong Foundations Brief; 4) Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) The African Union’s designation of 2024 as the Year of Education highlights the critical importance of education for equipping young Africans with the skills essential for their own and for the continent’s development. It is also a recognition of the multiple challenges ahead before every child can complete primary school having acquire the foundational skills that open the door for lifelong learning. Currently the out-of-school population is rising, one in five children do not complete primary school and, of those who do, only about one in five achieve minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics. African countries have set targets on primary completion and foundational learning but to effectively translate their ambitions into results, the 2024 Spotlight continental report emphasizes the importance of coherence between their curricula, textbooks, teacher guides and assessments. It evaluates the alignment of these policy documents with each other but also with a global standard of what students are expected to know and by when. It also assesses how these key documents are used in classrooms and what the implications are for children’s opportunities to learn. This report is the second in a series of three envisaged between 2022 and 2025, each covering some 12 countries of which a selection is examined in depth, in dialogue with education ministries and national stakeholders. The focus countries for this second Spotlight report cycle were Mauritania, Niger, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. The statistics and analysis presented in this publication aim to feed into the policy dialogue mechanism under the auspices of the African Union and its Continental Education Strategy for Africa. In particular, the Spotlight series aims to spark debate on foundational learning among African countries and encourage them to identify areas for joined action, given that they share a lot of policy challenges. 
Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education: The Right to a Strong Foundation; Key Highlights Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) This document is the key highlights of the Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education: The Right to a Strong Foundation. 
Beyond 2015: the education we want Year of publication: 2014 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) The post-2015 education agenda should be aspirational, transformative and holistic, and an integral part of the broader post-2015 development agenda. It should be of universal relevance and mobilize all stakeholders in all countries. Education must be a stand-alone goal in the broader post-2015 development agenda and should be framed by a comprehensive overarching goal, with measurable global targets and related indicators. In addition, education must be integrated into other development goals. The future education agenda should be rights-based and reflect a perspective based on equity and inclusion, with particular attention to gender equality and to overcoming all forms of discrimination in and through education, ensuring that no-one is left behind. It must support free and compulsory basic education.It should expand the vision of access for all to reflect relevant learning outcomes through the provision of quality education at all levels, from early childhood to higher education, in safe and healthy environments. It should take a holistic and lifelong learning approach, and provide multiple pathways of learning using innovative methods and information and communication technologies. It should reinforce approaches such as global citizenship education and education for sustainable development, which foster attitudes and behaviours that promote peace, conflict resolution and mutual understanding, tolerance, critical thinking, and respect for cultural diversity and for the environment. 
Building Back Equal: Girls Back to School Guide Year of publication: 2020 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) | Plan International | United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI) | Malala Fund The guide provides targeted inputs to ensure continuity of learning during school closures, and comprehensive, timely and evidence-based plans for reopening schools in a way that is safe, gender-responsive and child-friendly, and meets the needs of the most marginalised girls. This guide emphasizes an approach to ‘build back equal’ through gender-responsive measures that transform education systems, prioritise resilience and address the key bottlenecks and barriers to girls’ education, including: Gender-responsive data and evidence to inform action, including data disaggregated by sex and gender-responsive monitoring to identify promising practices to promote gender equality. Policies, laws and plans to advance girls’ rights, including the removal of discriminatory practices that impede girls’ educational participation and completion, and ability to apply their learning. Sustained financing to achieve results, protecting education financing for girls’ education, alongside health, social protection and economy recovery initiatives with an equity lens. 
Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education: The Right to a Strong Foundation Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Inclusive and quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) are vital for promoting school readiness, foundational learning, and lifelong well-being. Yet almost 60% of children in low-income countries do not have access to early care and learning opportunities. To meet national targets of providing at least one year of organized learning before primary school, low-income and lower-middle-income countries must fill an annual financial gap of USD 21 billion and recruit at least six million more educators before 2030. The first global report, jointly published by UNESCO and UNICEF, offers insights into global and regional ECCE trends. The report, which is a key response to the commitments outlined in the Tashkent Declaration, synthesizes scientific evidence on ECCE’s importance, and exposes persistence gaps in policy and investment. It illustrates how countries have responded to providing equitable and quality ECCE opportunities. The report invites all stakeholders, from governments and policy-makers, to educators, parents and organizations, to ensure that the commitments made in the Tashkent Declaration are fully realized by building a strong foundation for every child. 
Good Practices in South-South and Triangular Cooperation: Transforming Education and Delivering on SDG 4 Year of publication: 2023 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) | UN. Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) Quality Education: South-South cooperation as a lever for action. This publication showcases 40 innovative solutions on how South-South and Triangular Cooperation can transform education.South-South and triangular cooperation is at the heart of SDG4 implementation on Quality Education. As demonstrated in the last few years, this kind of cooperation can mobilize action, ambition, solidarity and solutions to transform education in a rapidly changing world. From the inclusive approach to digital learning in Lao People’s Democratic Republic to distance learning and teacher training strategies in Caribbean SIDS, South-South cooperation is a key modality of cooperation for transforming education and supporting internationally agreed development goals, including the 2030 Agenda. This publication showcases 40 innovative solutions on how South-South and Triangular Cooperation can transform education.This publication presents forty innovative solutions from around the world which showcase how South-South and triangular cooperation can support the development of more efficient, equitable and resilient education systems that are adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. Countries of the South, with the support of partners, must enhance South-South and triangular cooperation to exchange resources, technology, skills and knowledge to realize the promise of making inclusive, quality education available to all. 
Approaches to Language in Education for Migrants and Refugees in the Asia-Pacific Region Year of publication: 2020 Corporate author: UNESCO | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) UNESCO Bangkok commissioned this paper to examine strategies for addressing the needs of refugee, migrant and internally displaced children in the Asia-Pacific region. This document aims to create a stronger knowledge base to support Member States as they formulate education policies that are responsive to the needs of such children. This document aims to:Examine how linguistic diversity and human mobility intersect and impact minority, migrant and refugee children’s access to quality, inclusive educationLink policy priorities to promising practices, based on international frameworks and lessons learned from successful programmesRecommend steps for improving language-in-education policies and their implementation. To do this, this paper examines:Global and regional trends in migrationThe impact of migration on children’s educationLinguistic diversity and its implications for language-in-education policies and practicesResearch and resources that support inclusive quality education for migrant and refugee children. 
Learning to live together: an intercultural and interfaith programme for ethics education; Good Practices Series 2; Learning to Play Together Year of publication: 2014 Corporate author: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) | Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children | Arigatou Foundation Learning to live together: an intercultural and interfaith programme for ethics education; Good Practices Series 2; Learning to Play Together