By Amber Webb
Four years ago, the UN’s Transforming Education Summit (TES) brought the global community together around a shared ambition: to fundamentally rethink education so that every learner can thrive. The meeting emerged from an urgent recognition that education systems were not on track to deliver the promises of SDG4: Quality Education, particularly since the COVID19 pandemic had exposed deep inequalities in access, quality, and learning outcomes.
The TES generated ambitious commitments. Countries pledged to improve learning, support teachers, expand digital opportunities, strengthen financing, and build more equitable and resilient education systems. The summit aimed to provoke an important turning point, but it also raised an enduring question: How will we know if education is truly being transformed?
As the global community reconvenes for TES+4 this week, that question is more salient than ever. In response, SDSN has launched its latest policy brief, Making Education Data Count, to highlight why stronger, more meaningful education data must become a cornerstone of education transformation and to offer practical recommendations for ensuring that data informs better policy, planning, and progress toward SDG4.
Transformation Requires Data
As emphasized in the brief, education transformation cannot succeed without reliable, relevant, and timely data. Transforming systems requires more than ambitious policies and political commitments. It requires the ability to identify where learners are being left behind, understand which interventions are working, allocate resources where they are needed most, and adapt policies as circumstances change. Data provide this foundation by turning aspirations into measurable progress and enabling governments to move from reactive decision-making to strategic planning. As countries work to advance the global education agenda, data are not simply a mechanism for monitoring global targets. They are an essential tool for diagnosing challenges, guiding reform, evaluating impact, and ensuring that education systems can continuously learn and improve in response to changing needs.
Fortunately, education systems today generate more information than ever before. Governments collect administrative records, conduct learning assessments, monitor school participation, and increasingly disaggregate data to better understand disparities across gender, disability, geography, income, and other dimensions of exclusion. This represents enormous progress. Unfortunately, having more data does not necessarily mean making better decisions.
In many countries, education data remain fragmented across institutions, collected primarily for reporting purposes, or presented in ways that are difficult for policymakers and practitioners to interpret and apply. At the same time, conversations about data have become increasingly technocratic, sometimes emphasizing complex methodologies and compliance over practical decision-making. As a result, data can be perceived as the domain of statisticians rather than a strategic asset for education leaders. When this happens, one of our most powerful tools for improving education risks being underutilized.
Data Availability to Data Impact
The challenge today is no longer simply producing data. It is ensuring that data leads to better decisions. Good data should help governments identify where learners are being left behind, understand which reforms are producing meaningful results, target investments more effectively, and adapt policies as conditions evolve. Rather than becoming an administrative exercise, data should enable faster learning, smarter decision-making, and greater accountability across education systems.
This matters because the world is entering a critical period for global education. With only a few years remaining until 2030, many SDG4 targets remain unfulfilled. At the same time, discussions about the future global development agenda are beginning to take shape. Policy makers are increasingly asking not only whether children are in school, but whether they are learning, acquiring relevant skills, and contributing to social, economic, and environmental transformation.
Making Education Data Count argues that improving education data is not simply a technical exercise. It is a strategic investment in better education systems. The brief calls for a stronger focus on data quality, relevance, accessibility, and use, ensuring that information is not only collected but translated into meaningful action at every level of decision-making.
Four years after the Transforming Education Summit, the education community has a clearer understanding of both the scale of the challenge and the opportunities ahead. The question is no longer whether data matter. The question is whether we will use data to drive the transformation we have already committed ourselves to achieving. If we are serious about delivering quality education for all, then making education data count must become central to ongoing policy and practice.
Dr. Amber Webb has been a professional in international education for 15+ years. She presently serves as Senior Advisor for the SDG Academy at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. She also presently serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, teaching courses on education for global peace and international education policy. Dr. Webb previously worked in humanitarian aid, leading educational efforts for conflict-affected children. She holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Maryland.
