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The SDG 4 benchmark process, supported by the and the Global Education Monitoring Report, responds to the which had called on countries to establish ‘appropriate intermediate benchmarks ... for addressing the accountability deficit associated with longer-term targets’. 

Overall, 79% of countries have submitted benchmarks, or national targets, to be achieved by 2025 and 2030 for at least one of eight SDG 4 indicators.  Apart from the public expenditure indicators, for which there is a common benchmark for all countries, the two benchmark indicators with the highest submission rates are the early childhood education participation rate (72%) and the completion rate (65%). The two indicators with the lowest submission rates are the gender gap in upper secondary completion (36%), and school internet connectivity (32%). 

Overall, the Scorecard shows insufficient progress towards national SDG 4 benchmarks. Progress is close to countries' national benchmarks in primary school internet connectivity (just 3 percentage points off track) and in pre-primary school teachers with minimum required qualifications (just 2 percentage points off track). Progress is significantly more off track for the remaining six indicators. In two of them, countries are moving backwards: the gender gap among countries with a disadvantage for boys (where the gap has increased from 6.8 to 9.5 percentage points) and public education expenditure (where the median country has fallen from 13.8% to 12.7%, moving further away from the minimum benchmark of 15% of total public expenditure).

Among the three indicators with the highest data coverage, the percentage of countries that have indicator levels above 95% and/or have recorded fast progress is 40% in the early childhood education participation rate, 28% in the upper secondary completion rate, and 21% in public education expenditure. However, challenges remain with the large share of indicators for which there are either no data or there are insufficient data to establish a trend. These gaps prevent comprehensive assessment of progress, especially with respect to the indicator on the minimum level of proficiency.

It will not be until 2027 at the earliest that the achievement of the 2025 benchmarks can be verified, once 2025 data are available for all countries. In the meantime, the focus will be on the probability of countries reaching their benchmarks. Countries have been classified into six categories based on the speed of their recent progress and the range of progress rates observed historically (2000–15). Four categories capture the speed of progress since 2010 or 2015 – and its implication for the probability of achieving the benchmark – and two categories recognize the non-availability of data. For countries without national benchmarks (either submitted or extracted from national sector plans), progress is evaluated against the feasible benchmarks. As described previously, these were estimated for each indicator based on the average rate of progress of the fastest-improving top 25% of countries in 2000–15 and vary by the indicator’s starting value. 

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