{"id":7183,"date":"2018-02-20T07:28:09","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T07:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7183"},"modified":"2018-02-20T07:28:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T07:28:09","slug":"rag-ratings-for-the-sdgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/02\/20\/rag-ratings-for-the-sdgs\/","title":{"rendered":"RAG Ratings for the SDGs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an idle moment (and with inadequate data) I have been assessing the UK's performance against the SDG targets \u2013 doing this for UKSSD.<\/p>\n<p>I used RAG ratings which are \"suggestion of performance\" against the goal. \u00a0These are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Red - off target, poor progress, not addressed in existing policies<\/li>\n<li>Amber - some progress or aspect of the targets met<\/li>\n<li>Green - global or proposed UK target has been met, exceeded or is near to being met<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In what follows, I've used a <em><strong>Now =&gt; 2030<\/strong><\/em> format. \u00a0The first RAG is the <em><strong>now<\/strong><\/em> assessment and the second one shows the <em><strong>trend<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Here you go:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.1 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I don\u2019t know about international standards (eg OECD), but surely the education provided is of \u2018quality\u2019 for a significant proportion of UK students<\/li>\n<li>For that same majority, the learning outcomes\u00a0are reasonably\u00a0relevant and effective\u00a0for today<\/li>\n<li>That said, given that the indicator is only concerned with reading and maths, these outcomes must be as effective tomorrow as they are today.<\/li>\n<li>The challenge for the UK is the \u2018all\u2019 in the target where the socially-deprived tail is too long and persistent despite efforts to fix the problem<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.2<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I don\u2019t know about international standards here but many UK children do have access to \u2018quality\u2019 provision at this stage.<\/li>\n<li>But too many do not and the ones that don\u2019t are the ones who most need it.<\/li>\n<li>Again, the challenge for the UK is the \u2018all\u2019 in the target where the socially-deprived tail is long and persistent despite efforts to fix the problem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.3<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The UK has more than our share of good universities and a large number of young people enrol and graduate. \u00a0We are good at this<\/li>\n<li>There are more female students in HE than male.<\/li>\n<li>The drop-out rate is low by international standards and employers rate the quality of graduates.<\/li>\n<li>There is not, however, equal access as HE provision is rationed in Scotland (and probably in Wales as well) because tuition is fully tax-payer funded.<\/li>\n<li>One outcome of this is that the proportion of Scottish students from socially-deprived backgrounds going to HE is much lower than it is in England. \u00a0That said, there is still room for improvement on this measure in all parts of the UK.<\/li>\n<li>Further, in Scotland it\u2019s the case that the vocational education sector has been starved of tax-payer funding because it\u2019s been diverted to HE institutions that don\u2019t have access to student fees.<\/li>\n<li>I note, however, that this target is not really about universities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.4<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The target here is a loose one\u00a0\u201csubstantially increase\u00a0\u2026\u201d. \u00a0Given how poor the provision is now, this should not be a problem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.5<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This target is a mixed bag and \u201cmultidimentional\u201d is a kind word.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cEliminate\u201d sets a high standard.<\/li>\n<li>The biggest gender disparity has to be working-class \u2018white\u2019 boys, doing poorly all through the system. \u00a0I was one such, once.<\/li>\n<li>As to the vulnerable, this is at least an issue we take seriously.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.6<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>OECD data would suggest that the UK is good at this.<\/li>\n<li>NB, not all parts of the UK now take all the relevant international tests (eg PIRLS). \u00a0Northern Ireland and England take the full complement, I think.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target 4.7<\/strong> \u2013By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture\u2019s contribution to sustainable development<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cmultidimentional\u201d is a wholly inadequate description for this nonsense. \u00a0\u201cGrab bag\u201d is better.<\/li>\n<li>Given that no one has any idea what the\u00a0\"knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development\u201d\u00a0are, it seems hard to say anything sensible. \u00a0All this makes me want to curl up in a ball and rock quietly from side to side until it all goes away.<\/li>\n<li>Further, I don\u2019t accept that, whatever the\u00a0knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development are, they can be in any way dependent on the conceptual incoherence inherent within ESD.<\/li>\n<li>This means that I don\u2019t see any need to differentiate between the bits of the UK in coming to a judgement, especially as this would mean discounting the strength of the contribution of, say, the global learning programme in England.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target\u00a04.a<\/strong>. \u2013 Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Surely we already do this apart from the benighted few in proxy-madrassas, ultra-orthodox outposts and fundamentalist, Creationist CoE covens \u2013 and Ofsted (etc) have them in view.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target 4.b.<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We can and should do more of this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Target 4.c.<\/strong> \u2013 By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Amber =&gt; Green<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As 4b<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>...............................<\/p>\n<p>Phew!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an idle moment (and with inadequate data) I have been assessing the UK's performance against the SDG targets \u2013 doing this for UKSSD. I used RAG ratings which are \"suggestion of performance\" against the goal. \u00a0These are: Red -...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}