Achieving the Goals- 2009: The Performance of Commonwealth Countries in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Education and the Dakar Education for All Goals

This report, commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat for the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2009, explores progress towards achieving good quality basic education for all.

Section A describes briefly the composition and the diversity of the Commonwealth before providing two short overviews on trends and significant advances in basic education across all of the countries of the Commonwealth and regional trends and patterns for Commonwealth Asia, Commonwealth Sub-Saharan Africa, the Commonwealth Caribbean and the Commonwealth Pacific.

Section B presents data for each Commonwealth country in graphical and diagrammatic form, contrasting wherever possible, the state of basic education in 1999 with the latest available statistics. Particular attention is paid to pre-primary education, Universal Primary Education (UPE), progress towards higher levels of adult literacy, gender parity and equality and some proxy indicators of better quality in basic education.

Steve Packer is an independent consultant based in London. From 2002 to 2005, he was Deputy Director of UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report. Prior to that, he worked for the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) as a Senior Education Adviser in Central Africa and then as Head of Policy in the Education Department.