The Role of Education in Enabling the Sustainable Development Agenda

The Role of Education in Enabling the Sustainable Development Agenda explores the relationship between education and other key sectors of development in the context of the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. While it is widely understood that there is a positive relationship between education and other dimensions of development, and populations around the world show a clear desire for more and better education, education remains an under-financed and under-prioritised sector within development. When education does make it onto the agenda, investment is usually diverted towards increasing access to formal schooling, without focusing on the intrinsic value of education as a tool for development within the international development community more broadly.

The authors explore these tensions through a review of literature from a range of disciplines, providing a clearer picture of the relationship between education and other development sectors. The book challenges silo-thinking in the SDGs by exploring how achieving the SDG education targets can be expected to support or hinder progress towards other targets, and vice-versa. Drawing on examples from both low and high income countries, the book demonstrates how ‘good’ education functions as an ‘enabling right’, impacting positively on many other areas.

The book’s scope ranges across education and development studies, economics, geography, sociology and environmental studies, and will be of interest to any researchers and students with an interest in education and the SDGs.

Stephanie E.L. Bengtsson is a researcher, educator, and consultant working on a range of topics related to international education and development, including inclusive education, sustainable development, teachers and teaching, education in emergencies, and education and migration. She is based at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), Austria.

Bilal Barakat is a researcher, lecturer, and consultant specialising in education modelling and planning who works on a diverse range of research topics, including education and sustainable development, higher education quality assurance, education in post-conflict settings, teacher training and recruitment. He is based at the Wittgenstein Centre, Austria.

Raya Muttarak is a researcher and lecturer working on education, climate action, and sustainable development, differential impacts of climate variability on health, migration, and child welfare, and climate change perceptions and environmental behaviours. She is based at the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK, and is affiliated with the Wittgenstein Centre, Austria.

The Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital is a collaboration between the World Population Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (VID/ÖAW), the Demography Group and the Research Institute on Human Capital and Development of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). The Centre combines the partners’ multidisciplinary strengths in order to contribute to the scientific evidence base in the fields of demography, human capital formation and analysis of the returns to education.