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The Summit aims to elevate education as a priority on the global political agenda to mobilize action and the will of world leaders and regain lost ground in teaching. It also seeks to engage the private sector and civil society. A broad participation of youth is expected, engaging in dialogue with world leaders about their perspectives and needs in the education sector.

The Summit takes place at a time when the negative effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents worldwide are evident, with learning loss, declining enrollment, and mental health impact on educational communities. Current education systems are failing students of all ages, necessitating adaptation to changes and fostering creativity. Learning resources need to evolve and reflect the transformations in teaching and learning methods. Additionally, alternatives must be developed for those excluded from the education system, enabling them to acquire basic life skills, new competencies, and improve existing ones through continuous education.

In this context, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called on world leaders to a meeting that seeks to generate national and international commitments to transform education. It also aims to increase public participation and support for the transformation process and establish guidelines that translate into a United Nations declaration of principles to guide countries in this educational transformation.

"As the United Nations System in Chile, we are committed to supporting the State in joining the global challenge of transforming education to reduce the enormous inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sustainable development," emphasized María José Torres, Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in the country.

Claudia Uribe, Director of the Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago), stated, "It is urgent to accelerate progress towards educational recovery to realize the right to education and not lose decades of progress in this matter. In Latin America and the Caribbean, economic difficulties and COVID-19 have slowed down progress towards SDG 4 targets of the 2030 Agenda, making their achievement, which was already uncertain before the pandemic, quite improbable today unless policies are changed and education financing is increased."

Paolo Mefalopulos, UNICEF Representative in Chile, said, "The pandemic has had a devastating effect on the lives of children and adolescents worldwide, especially in education. The interruption of in-person classes has resulted in learning setbacks, disproportionately affecting boys and girls from the most vulnerable sectors. Chile, like all countries in the world, faces an enormous challenge in this regard, and this meeting seeks to foster collaboration among countries in the search for solutions."

The future of hundreds of millions of children and adolescents worldwide demands urgent action to ensure that all of them have access to and remain in the classroom, that systems are in place to regularly assess their learning levels, and that teaching is efficient, enabling everyone to accelerate their learning and reach their full potential.

To advance these points, the Transforming Education Summit addresses specific thematic areas, called "pathways for action", with the aim of ensuring this fundamental right so that no person, regardless of location or age, is deprived of it.

The pathways for action focus on specific areas that require attention, key levers to transform education, mobilize new commitments, highlight effective policy interventions, and leverage existing initiatives and partnerships, including those that emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, they provide an opportunity to rethink and reimagine the purpose and content of education and the modalities used to deliver it. In other words, they aim to transform education towards peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable futures for humanity and the planet.

The pathways for action will ensure ongoing engagement with Member States and will be open to all stakeholders. They are:

1. Inclusive, equitable, safe, and healthy schools: High poverty rates, exclusion, and gender inequality continue to hinder millions of children's learning. COVID-19 has further exposed inequalities in access and the quality of education, while violence, armed conflicts, and disasters have increased insecurity.

2. Learning and skills for life, work, and sustainable development: There is a crisis in fundamental learning, literacy, and numeracy skills. In 2020, over 770 million people still lacked basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom were women. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have basic reading and math skills compared to their peers.

3. Teachers, teaching, and the teaching profession: The teaching workforce is essential for achieving learning outcomes and transforming education. However, challenges such as teacher shortages, lack of professional development opportunities, low status and working conditions, and limited capacity to develop leadership, autonomy, and teaching innovation need to be addressed.

4. Digital learning and transformation: The COVID-19 crisis has led to unprecedented innovations in remote learning through the use of digital technologies. At the same time, digital divides have excluded many children from the learning process, with over two-thirds of school-age students (1.3 billion children) lacking access to the internet at home.

5. Financing education: While global education spending has increased overall, it has been thwarted by population growth, higher costs of administering education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a significant global financial gap in education.

Further information

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