School completion rate
The Arab region has registered better completion rates for primary than lower secondary, indicating that a sizable number of children are dropping out of education after primary level.

Learning outcomes
Learning outcomes are placed at the center of educational progress. The global and regional assessments show that in the Arab region (Western Asia & Northern Africa) student proficiency levels are low warranting more concerted efforts to enhance them.

Early childhood education
The SDG4 national reports indicate that early childhood education is promising, with many countries paying attention to ECE laws and policies, school nutrition and healthcare, training of teachers, caregivers and educators; and home-based care programs. It is encouraging to note that some countries have also reported children under 5 years experiencing positive and stimulating home  environments.

ICT Skills
As per the two basic ICT skills, namely, ability to open and type an email and using the copy-and-paste function, there has been moderate increase in the ICT skills in the region.

Literacy and numeracy skills

it remains a challenge for most countries to ndertake systematic literacy assessments that measure the proficiency levels. Currently, there are attempts made at developing new common scales against which the minimum proficiency levels can be measured. Measuring progress in ESD and GCED: Monitoring and tracking progress on ESD and GCED would require common consensus among the countries in the Arab region about the required competencies and strategies for implementation at all levels, including policy and curricular changes to align with regional standards for measuring ESD and GCED.

Teachers’ Training
The pupil-qualified teacher ratio (PQTR) for primary and secondary levels for most countries of the region indicating that the teaching capacity has grown.

Other issues and challenges
There are three important issues that warrant special focus from policy and planning perspectives and they are:

1. Youth not in employment, education or training (NEET) (SDG8);
2. Disability and learning (several SDGs);
3. Improving data, monitoring and accountability (SDG17).

Best practices from the region
The report reveals good practices from the Arab Region on the topic of disability and education infrastructure, safe school environment, gender sensitive infrastructure, etc.

Assessment of learning loss
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the Arab world as much as the rest of the world. An important impact has been learning loss. There is a need to assess such learning loss so that suitable ‘catch-up’ programmes may be designed for use when schools reopen.

Way forward
Building statistical capacity to bridge data gaps for several SDG4 indicators for the countries in the region calls for more coordinated efforts to strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems There is also a need to focus on issues relating to:

1. having necessary policies, frameworks and standards;
2. strengthening coordination and participation;
3. improving quality, availability and use of data;
4. addressing the learning crisis and underpinning the importance of learning assessments;
5. localization of SDG 4; and
6. addressing issues that matter for accelerating the Education Agenda 2030 in the region.