Education is key to building and maintaining the kind of society in which we would like our children and grandchildren to live. Education should prepare for life as active citizens in democratic societies and for sustainable employment as well as further the personal development of learners and develop a broad, advanced knowledge base. Sustainable development requires the commitment of individual citizens and civil society as well as of public authorities and can therefore be fully achieved only in democratic societies. An essential goal of education is to develop the competences for democratic culture that enable democratic institutions and laws to function in practice. Our understanding of quality education must encompass the role of education in society as well as social inclusion: no education system can be considered of high quality unless it provides adequate opportunities for all learners.

Since 2015, the adoption of Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted, Member States in all regions of the world have made efforts to align their national education policies and strategies with the commitments of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This has included efforts to strengthen policy focus on the most vulnerable populations, to ensure more effective and relevant learning both for the world of work as well as for citizenship, to adapt education sector coordination, management and monitoring, and to strengthen linkages with other development sectors.

The global process of review of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprises a number of processes and mechanisms, including Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee, the Global Education Meeting (Brussels, 3-5 December 2018) and Regional Education 2030 consultations.

A series of regional Education 2030 consultations in 2018 informing the December 2018 Global Education Meeting and the 2019 High-Level Political Forum Review have or will soon take place. These consultations include: the Pan-African High-Level Conference on Education (Nairobi, 25-27 April 2018); the Asia-Pacific Education 2030 Consultation (Bangkok, 12-14 July 2018); the Latin American and Caribbean Ministerial Conference (Bolivia, 25-26 July 2018); and an Arab Education 2030 consultation planned for November 2018. The Strasbourg Education 2030 consultation will bring in insight from the Europe and North American regions as part of this global process of review of progress towards the implementation of key SDG4-Education 2030 commitments.