Reconciliación con Dios

The second key policy moment I have identified within this first pathway is the final report of the United Nations High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) in 2013. This HLP was convened by UN Secretary-General in 2012 to “advise him on a bold and at the same time practical development agenda

beyond 2015.” (UN HLP, 2013, p. 66). It was co-chaired by three heads of State (at that

time): President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, and Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK, with 27 women and

men (predominately politicians and high-level policy officials) along with some business leaders and a couple of human rights activists. The HLP were tasked with making recommendations for the development of the post-2015 agenda following on from the Millennium Development Goals and Rio +20 process.

Over the course of the year, the HLP sought input through meetings, surveys, and mobile phone polling, asking what to keep from the MDGs, what to amend and what to add, publishing their final report in May 2013 (UN HLP, 2013). The HLP process ran more or less simultaneously with the MyWorld and thematic consultations, with the survey results and the outcomes of the 2013 thematic consultation meeting for education (see pathway 2) informing the HLP deliberations.

HLP call for social, economic and environmental aspects of development to be merged into one single universal agenda. This is a significant shift from past global frameworks where these areas were separate and where, as in the MDGs,

development was seen as something for the Global South. The report calls for “five big, transformative shifts” (UN HLP, 2013, Exec. Summary), which include “leaving no one behind” – which becomes a mantra of the post-2015 agenda. One of the shifts is to transform the economy to promote jobs and inclusive growth. They also call for sustainable development at the heart of the post-2015 agenda and to build effective, open and accountable institutions. The final shift, which they argue is the most important, is to forge a new global partnership (cf. Ibid). The HLP note that globally agreed goals can be powerful drivers of change but to do so they must have measurable indicators. The HLP put forward twelve

illustrative goals, one of which proposed that governments “Provide Quality

Education and Lifelong Learning” (HLP, 2013. p.36, see appendix E for the full illustrative goal on education).

The report is influential for education for a number of reasons. Firstly, including education as one of the illustrative goals further consolidates it as a standalone goal. Secondly, the illustrative goal has a focus on quality and lifelong learning, as well as including a strong focus on learning outcomes, all of which make it into the final SDG4 -

and in some places, the language is almost identical. It signals an expansion beyond the MDG goal, although it’s not as broad as the EFA framework. Thirdly, it stresses the economic imperative of education for development post-2015, aligned to an HCT of education discussed in the previous chapter. This is partly done through the targets and partly in the accompanying text. While education is identified as a “fundamental right” and there are references to the rights of the child, the overwhelming flavour is one that promotes education as a key ingredient in economic development. It stresses

education’s role in in lifting “lifetime earnings as well as how much a person can engage

with and contribute to society.” (ibid, p36). It places a strong emphasis on learning,

including signalling that “[s]kills learned in school must also help young people to get a

job.” (Ibid, p37). This emphasis on the economic role of education is given an additional

boost by inclusion of a graph on the economic rates of return that education can bring, reinforcing education’s role in society as an economic imperative.

(HLP, 2013, p. 37).

The chart above sends a powerful message on where the value of education lies. From this perspective, education’s ‘success’ is largely measured by its ability to create a skilled workforce and promote economic growth.

The fourth important influence of the HLP for SDG4 is that it emphasises measurable outcomes calling for children to be “able to read, write and count well enough to meet

minimum learning standards” and for “adolescents to achieve recognised and measurable learning outcomes to x%” (Ibid, p. 36). The call for measurable learning

outcomes is realised in the final text of SDG4. What is more, the global indicators for SDG4 ultimately have a strong impact on how the targets themselves are interpreted, arguably reshaping the goals and targets after their adoption (see chapter 6).

In many ways the HLP report offers a broad understanding of the contribution of education to the post-2015 development. It recognises education’s potential to contribute to sustainable development in building awareness for recycling and renewable energy, ending corruption, impacting health and family size, and playing a role in peace processes. More generally, the report highlights women’s rights,

indigenous rights, sexual and reproductive rights. However, the economy is dominant in relation to education, with numerous links between education and earnings,

livelihoods, jobs, growth success of business and business capacity. The HLP report clearly reinforces a HCT vision of education. In fairness to the HLP, they explain that

“[y]oung people asked for education beyond primary schooling, not just formal learning but life skills and vocational training to prepare them for jobs.” (Ibid, p 2). But the strong

emphasis on education and work (also reinforced from the outset through the drop- down box of the MyWorld Survey) can also be seen as a means by which education is used “to forge subjectivities whose imagination is aligned with the interests of

capital” (Rizvi, 2006, p, 200), with education part of a trajectory to earning potential rather than being of inherent value.

The HLP format was seen as means of building consensus on new policy directions in the context of increasingly complex multilateralism (von Einsiedel, and Pichler, 2017). Comprised of high level figures, the HLP was vested with power from the outset and, unsurprisingly, was influential in shaping the future agenda. It cemented the

formalisation of a standalone goal for education; it influenced the scope and core language and a strong focus on learning outcomes, and promoted the link between education, work and the economy.