Emphasizing the importance of data and statistics as the ‘fuel that drives progress across all the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ this conference set out the ambitious goal of starting a regular dialogue among statisticians and those in the education sector on ways of measuring the ongoing progress in attaining SDG4 ‘high-quality education.’ The IPA is heavily implicated in this dialogue both through the Educational Publishers Forum and the Digital and Statistics Committee.
Many of the issues discussed during the conference (the need for clear definitions of multiple terms and inputs, the problem of territories where there is a chronic lack of data, low or inconsistent coverage, low comparability and incomplete, inaccurate or totally missing data) are familiar to those of us trying to compile data and statistics in the publishing sector. UNESCO reported that the conference was a success and we expect there to be future iterations. All the conference materials, including presentations and reports, are available on the conference website: https://ces.uis.unesco.org/.