How business leadership can advance Goal 4 on Quality Education
Achieving inclusive, equitable, and quality education for all will require substantial effort. Despite considerable gains in education enrollment over the past 15 years, worldwide, the adjusted net enrollment rate in 2015 was 89 percent for primary education and 65 percent for secondary education. About 263 million children and youth were out of school, including 61 million children of primary school age. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia account for over 70 per cent of the global out-of-school population.
Do your actions satisfy the Leadership Qualities?
Guiding Questions to apply to the Leadership Qualities to your business
Intentionality
Ambition
Consistency
Collaboration
Accountability
- Is your company committed to supporting the achievement of Goal 4? Have you developed a holistic strategy that reflects this commitment, covering end-to-end operation and the wider community?
- Are you committed to learn from your actions and do you have processes in place to improve them accordingly?
- Is your strategy supported by the highest levels of management, including the Board of Directors?
Key Considerations
Actions to further Goal 4 must be an integral part of a company’s strategy, with top-level commitment that motivates employees across the organization to support education in underserved areas.
- Do your actions achieve long-term outcomes that greatly exceed those resulting from current industry practice?
- Are your actions aligned with what is needed to achieve Goal 4?
Key Considerations
Ambition on Goal 4 requires companies to continually aim for better learning outcomes. Action with the most impact takes place across the workplace, marketplace, and wider community, focusing particularly on disadvantaged regions and groups. Action should support the overarching goal of free, accessible, and quality primary and secondary education.
- Is support for Goal 4 embedded across all organizational functions?
- Are staff and board incentives aligned with achieving Goal 4?
Key Considerations
Consistency requires businesses to ensure that support for quality, equitable, and inclusive education is embedded across all organizational functions. This is especially important for businesses that have a large share of end-to-end operations in areas with poor education outcomes.
- Do you proactively look for opportunities to partner with Governments, UN agencies, suppliers, civil society organizations, industry peers and other stakeholders to inform how to advance Goal 4?
Key Considerations
Collaboration on Goal 4 means companies will partner with, and engage, Governments, civil society, industry peers, schools, universities and other educational institutions to understand how all can work together to support quality, equitable and inclusive education.
- Do you publicly express your commitment to advance Goal 4?
- Do you identify, monitor, and report on impacts, including potentially adverse impacts?
- Do you mitigate risks associated with your action?
- Do you remediate negative impacts associated with this action?
- Do you engage stakeholders in a meaningful way?
Key Considerations
Accountability entails monitoring and reporting on business impacts on educational and learning outcomes, ensuring that actions do not contribute to existing inequalities, managing risks of negative impacts, and meaningfully engaging educational institutions, Governments, students, and others to understand areas of need
Business Actions
BUSINESS ACTION 1
Provide access to training
BUSINESS ACTION 2
Ensure adequate wages for dependents' education
BUSINESS ACTION 3
Implement programmes to support education
BUSINESS ACTION 4
Improve education access
BUSINESS ACTION 1
Ensure that all employees across the business and supply chain have access to vocational training and life-long learning opportunities
Quality education includes the provision of life-long learning opportunities and vocational schemes. Companies are uniquely positioned to further life-long\ learning, which can result in stronger growth, innovation and increased welfare. Leading companies will make particular efforts to extend these opportunities to vulnerable groups, including women, ethnic minorities, members of the LGBT community, and economically disadvantaged communities, across its operations and multiple tiers of its supply chain.
Example Practices
- A coffee company partners with a local university to provide employees with the opportunity to attend courses free of cost or at a highly subsidised rate
- A company offers its employees the chance to go on a sabbatical to a local school where they assist with teaching. This helps employees enhance their community engagement skills
- A company offers training workshops to women and men to enhance their skills and to educate both sides against subconscious biases that could affect women’s promotion and access to life-long learning opportunities
- A global food producer trains women smallholder farmers in its supply chain in sustainable agricultural practices to enhance their capacities to adapt to and cope with climate change
Consider the leadership qualities and interconnectedness of your action, including…
- Accountability: leadership means that a company understands areas of need, formulates targets around these areas, and monitors and reports on educational outcomes of employees across its end-to-end operations.
- Interconnectedness: training the work force throughout end-to-end operations can contribute to Goal 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure and Goal 12 on sustainable production and consumption.
BUSINESS ACTION 2
Ensure that all employees across the business and supply chain earn a wage that allows them to support the education of dependents and that there is zero child labour
Businesses should ensure that their inputs are ethically sourced. Leading companies can adopt policies and practices to ensure that all companies across its supply chain pay a living wage and offer good working conditions, so that employees do not have to rely on supplementary income from child labour and can support the education of dependents. These could include strict supplier standards and capacity building efforts for suppliers to meet these, advanced monitoring schemes, and implementing best practice for remedial action.
Example Practices
- A clothing company implements programmes to build suppliers’ capacity to pay a living wage and promotes the use of digital payments to ensure that progress can be properly tracked and evaluated
- An electronics company helps suppliers implement policies, such as paying a decent wage and providing access to quality healthcare, to ensure that all employees are provided with the means to support the education and well-being of dependents and do not rely on children for additional income
Consider the leadership qualities and interconnectedness of your action, including…
- Collaboration: leading action requires working with a wide variety of stakeholders, including supply chain members, industry peers, Governments, schools, and educational institutions to understand areas of need and how collaboration can improve wages and educational outcomes.
- Interconnectedness: action to support the education of dependents and the provision of a wage which allows children to go to school instead of providing supplementary income, can help in empowerment and poverty alleviation (Goal 1).
BUSINESS ACTION 3
Implement programmes to support higher education and access to free, equitable, and inclusive primary and secondary education, focusing particularly on disadvantaged groups
Companies can leverage their finances, technological capabilities, expertise and, in particular, their convening power to support education at all levels with targeted programmes. Leading companies seek to implement programmes that address gaps by supporting education in impoverished areas and targeting disadvantaged groups. Convening the right stakeholders and, especially, working alongside national and local Governments is key to understanding needs and ensuring legitimacy and success of action.
Example Practices
- A consultancy sets up teacher training programmes to enhance the capacity of teachers in economically disadvantaged localities, to improve the quality of education in the area
- A global pharmaceuticals company funds educational projects around the world and provides assistive technology to local schools in an emerging economy to ensure that children with disabilities are able to successfully complete their studies
- A global IT company invests in engineering schools in developing countries, hires and trains local employees, and establishes educational schemes for women students to ensure that they can thrive in the workplace
Consider the leadership qualities and interconnectedness of your action, including…
- Collaboration: leading companies implement programmes in close partnerships with governments, which retain the primary responsibility for providing free quality education for all, and also involve other key stakeholders in local communities.
- Accountability: companies that implement programmes to support education, especially for disadvantaged groups, must meaningfully engage with all affected stakeholders and carefully manage risks of negative impacts and provide access to redress.
- Interconnectedness: action to support education can help to alleviate poverty (Goal 1). Risks of excluding marginalised groups and thereby increasing inequalities (Goal 10) should be managed.
BUSINESS ACTION 4
Research, develop and deploy products and services that improve educational access and learning outcomes
Companies are well placed to deliver product and service innovation to improve access to education and learning outcomes. They can target access, quality, and inclusiveness of education. Business can play a role in the development and deployment of improved methods and materials, including digital tools and services, tailored for populations with typically poor educational outcomes in developing countries. These could include services that are accessible through mobile phone and internet where this is available, but also the provision of easy-to-use, tailored teaching materials, and teacher training solutions.
Example Practices
- An IT company develops and distributes mobile-based applications to bring education to remote communities who would have otherwise had no access to such services
- A private sector education company develops an open-source web-tool and massive open online courses that provide free education for all
- A publisher develops a line of educational material whose content is tailored to the needs of marginalised communities and is published in the local language. It distributes the content to the concerned areas.
- A financial institution develops an innovative financing product, such as a social impact bond, to support teacher training and other programmes that enhance learning outcomes
Consider the leadership qualities and interconnectedness of your action, including…
- Accountability: new products and services to support education, especially for disadvantaged groups, must respond to areas of need identified through meaningful engagement with all affected stakeholders. In deployment, companies should carefully manage risks of negative impacts
- Interconnectedness: action to support education can help to alleviate poverty (Goal 1). Risks of excluding marginalised groups and thereby increasing inequalities (Goal 10) should be managed.
How taking action on Goal 4 is interconnected with other Goals
The Global Goals are inherently interconnected. Action taken toward one Goal can support or hinder the achievement of others. Identifying and addressing these interconnections will help business to build holistic and systemic solutions that amplify progress and minimize negative impacts. To help build a greater understanding, we have illustrated some of the ways in which the Goals connect. These are not exhaustive, and we encourage business to consider how they apply in their own operations.
Maximise likelihood of positive impact on:
Evidence shows that higher levels of education have a profound effect on improving health outcomes (Goal 3). Providing quality education also opens the door to future job opportunities which can help reduce inequalities (Goals 5 and 10), alleviate poverty (Goal 1), drive economic growth (Goal 8), allow individuals to access basic amenities such as nutrition and sanitation (Goals 2 and 6), and contribute to building a more peaceful society (Goal 16).
Minimise risk of negative impact on:
Business action to further education should manage risks of exacerbating existing inequalities (Goals 5 and 10). Inclusiveness is one of the most challenging aspect of supporting education but should be at the forefront of any effort.
Goal 4 Targets
Targets of Goal 4
- Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
- Ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
- Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
- Eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable
- Increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
- Ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy
- Ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.
References
- SDG Compass
- UN Global Compact Industry Matrix
- Global Opportunity Explorer
- Navigating the SDGs: a business guide to engaging with the UN Global Goals
- SDG Reporting - An Analysis of the Goals and Targets
- Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, Goal 4
- The Smartest Investment: A Framework for Business Engagement in Education
