EDUCATION Secretary Leonor Briones underscored three crucial factors in setting international and regional benchmarks for the Sustainable Development Goal 2030 indicators to monitor the real progress of countries.

She said that national policies, financing, and efforts at the regional level should be taken into account in establishing relevant benchmarking indicators.

“We have to look at the legal framework because countries, which are now being benchmarked according to comparative standards, are not necessarily similar in the legal framework, especially in the role of the head of the state who manages the struggle against Covid19,” the DepEd chief said at the Ministerial Segment of the UNESCO’s 2021 Global Education Meeting.

“The matter of financing is crucial and for the past 50 years, we’ve been talking about financing development. And we have not found a solution, particularly for middle and lower-income countries. Benchmarking can be influenced by the availability of financing,” she added.

Briones shared that the Philippines implemented a blended learning approach similar to other countries in Southeast Asia and developed a learning continuity plan to address the challenges in education amid the pandemic.

Over 80 education representatives and advocates worldwide attended the meeting and reaffirmed their commitment to improving international cooperation among the education sector.

Meanwhile, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay cited a survey covering 142 countries that reveals the worsening educational gaps due to the pandemic: inequality of learning access, high female school dropout rates, and budget gap.

She added that 11 million people could fall below the reading skills threshold, and it would take 11 years for 23 member-states of the organization to catch up.

Azoulay stressed the need to improve global cooperation mechanisms by promoting evidence-based policy formulation and implementation, enhancing collection and availability of data, and driving financing mobilization and better spending.