Broken Promises: Education, Inequality and the SDGs

Growing levels of inequality and socio-economic imbalances are challenging education. A lack of appropriate funding structures, securitisation, commodification, business-oriented operational structures, the replication of corporate management systems, curtailment of academic freedom, and uneven capacity for implementation increasingly undermine countries’ higher education promise under the SDGs. The world’s economies are facing significant pressures to keep pace with the demands of the knowledge economy and the triple-axis transition (i.e., green, digital, and defence). At the same time, the United Nations 2030 Agenda remains an ambitious compass for progress, but it is significantly off track. In parallel, the needs and demands of economic growth and progress continue to press the world’s economies to keep growing under archaic metrics for measuring it. Furthermore, there is increasing demand to identify competencies that enable a functioning labour market to respond to rising levels of information, environmental degradation, technological advances, innovation, and the management of social conflict. Economic models that align with sustainable development signal the need for a different type of worker and global citizen, requiring significant changes and, more importantly, a careful reconsideration and assessment of national and regional educational systems and models, and their implications for the global educational system. The global labour market needs knowledgeable workers who can adapt to the rapid pace of change. Still, it also needs to build a society that understands the value of cultural diversity, collaboration, cooperation, conflict management, resilience, and coexistence among humans, as well as respect for the planet’s ecosystems. This working paper offers a critical reflection on the importance of education in driving change and on how the world is failing to acknowledge the need to work towards integrated, inclusive, and accessible models and frameworks.