The Spotlight Session 3 concretely aims to mobilize strong political commitment and partnership for action at the highest level to transform education to harness its full potential for transforming society towards a just, peaceful, healthy and sustainable world, in particular by strengthening a focus on two interlinked areas:
- Tackling climate and environmental crisis
- Fostering ethical and socially responsible global citizens.
The two areas of action are closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Empowered, equal global citizens, contribute to global efforts to promote social justice, to tackle climate change, gender inequality and other sustainability challenges; at the same time, greening education would include learning and engagement on issues such as climate justice, human rights to healthy environments, gendered-impact of climate change, climate denial and misinformation, climate-induced conflict which are closely intertwined with global citizenship education. Given the urgency of global sustainability challenges, this high-level dialogue will create a critical momentum to transform the quality and relevance of education in today's world.
The Transforming Education Summit is being convened in response to a global crisis in education – one of equity and inclusion, quality and relevance. Often slow and unseen, this crisis is having a devastating impact on the futures of children and youth worldwide. The Summit provides a unique opportunity to elevate education to the top of the global political agenda and to mobilize action, ambition, solidarity and solutions to recover pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds to transform education in a rapidly changing world.