Several milestones have paved the regional route to the Education Transformation Summit (TES), convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in New York between the 16th and the 19th of September. In this space, Latin America and the Caribbean will contribute to the global analysis of the current situation and look at ways to rebuild education systems after the pandemic, recover learning and adjust teaching processes for today and the future, and strengthen the world’s efforts to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensuring quality education for all by 2030.

Por Valtencir Mendes, especialista senior del Programa de Educación y jefe de Educación de la Oficina Regional de Educación para América Latina y el Caribe (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago).

The report to be launched on 8 September will present data to guide regional education policy decision-making for the next decade. Its findings provide crucial information as education faces a crossroads in the region’s efforts to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 4. The study offers evidence to guide future policies and is a key input for the Transforming Education Summit convened by the United Nations Secretary-General.

The Ministers of Education and education authorities of Latin America and the Caribbean attended the meeting convened by UNESCO on 26 and 27 May, where they expressed their commitment to the recovery and transformation of their education systems to overcome the region´s greatest -ever education crisis. The agreements set out in the Declaration of Buenos Aires, published on 31 May, stress the importance of acting quickly and outline the commitments for recovery based on the principles of solidarity, equity and educational justice, with strengthened regional cooperation. They highlight the ethical imperative of prioritizing education, adequate financing and political will. 

"The right to education in context: recovering and transforming" is the theme of the III Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean, which will take place on 26 and 27 May in Buenos Aires. The meeting will bring together the Secretaries of State in charge of education systems in the region, who will meet with other government authorities, representatives of international cooperation agencies, experts and civil society actors to analyse the state of education in the region and the actions needed to recover from the negative impacts of COVID-19.