[Music] as Earth's sustainability crisis grows more dire it is becoming evident that we are now living in the Anthropocene a period where humans are a global geological force generating climate change in this context the need for sustainable development is clear this is where the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development comes in among the 17 sustainable development goals is SGG for quality education which aims to ensure education quality and access worldwide by 2030 the premise is that education is an important tool for responding to a host of challenges from breaking the poverty cycle to reducing
inequalities to fostering sustainable lifestyles it's hard to argue with education power and potential the challenge then becomes how to ensure that we are moving in the direction of achieving education accessing quality worldwide one way to monitor education quality is to use international large-scale assessments of academic achievement the most common international large-scale assessments in use today focus mainly on literacy and numeracy achievement while math and literacy are certainly important they alone are not sufficient indicators of an individual's ability to live and work sustainably in other words they are not the only measurements of quality education yet
many governments and organizations emphasize the use of literacy and numeracy achievement to assess education quality why is this problematic it's simple ignoring sustainability and education is the wrong educational answer in November 2018 with the support of the Spencer foundation the Center for Advanced Studies in global education of Arizona State University's Maryland Walton Teachers College organized the symposium focused on the challenge of using metrics to assess quality education the participants reiterated the idea that what doesn't get measured receives less attention and fewer dedicated resources indicators of environmental awareness and education for sustainability are among the things
that are not being measured in other words education is underutilized as a space to address Earth's precarity for decades environmental activists of all ages have been calling for a change and while education is not a magic wand that will solve global development challenges any solution to the climate catastrophe will require a fundamental change in educational systems worldwide the more we take our heels into this business as usual education model the more time we lose to are prioritizing an education model that fosters equity and sustainability metrics of Education quality and access are important but instead of
moving further in a direction of reducing measures of education quality to literacy and numeracy achievement it's time to follow a new path forward for reimagining educational systems that have as their main goals sustainability equity and environmental responsibility so that going forward we have a chance to better respond to the sustainability crisis [Music] [Music] you
