This year’s International Day of Education built on the UN Transforming Education Summit (TES) that was convened in September 2022, to urge Member States to maintain strong political mobilization around education and pave the way to translate global commitments into concrete actions.

The Summit which was the largest convening of education in recent decades, saw more than 130 countries commit to reboot their education systems, accelerate action to end the learning crisis, to recover learning losses from the pandemic and transform their education into more inclusive, relevant and resilient to future crisis.

On this international day, the first annual SDG4 benchmark monitoring publication was launched by the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The publications tracks the performance of each country towards achieving their national benchmarks, including commitments made at the Transforming Education Summit.

The 2023 International Day of Education gathered leaders from across the globe, international and regional organizations, civil society organisations, and international educators, as well as academia and youth. The celebration served as a global platform to ensure the sustainability of political mobilization, remind Member States of national commitments to fulfill Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly SDG4; the ultimate goal being to achieve peace, justice, equity, sustainable development and individual and collective wellbeing.

Investing in education will help countries to reach progress towards all the Sustainable Development Goals to prevent illiteracy, violence and inequalities as well as to combat global recession and the climate change crisis.