Sustainable development goal 4 : ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Abstract

Teaching students about the United Nations’ (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been shown to enhance their academic skills, foster their mental and moral development, boost their motivation and improve their future employment prospects. By learning about SDG 4, students become familiar with why we need to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and to promote lifelong learning. This seems essential in the light of the following disconcerting figures. • Despite the fact that enrolment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent, around 57 million children remain out of school. • More than half these children live in sub-Saharan Africa, and it is estimated that 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas. • Worldwide, 103 million young people lack basic literacy skills, and more than 60 per cent of them are women. SDG 4 comprises ten targets that constitute ways in which quality education can be made universally accessible by 2030. For example, aims state that ‘all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education’ and that ‘all youth and a substantial proportion of … both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy’. An emphasis on inclusion and gender equality runs through these targets, aligning this goal with some of the targets of SDG 5, which is aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. One of the targets of SDG 4 urges countries to ‘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’. Quality education is conceived of as an inclusive and equitable force and this makes SDG 4 a means by which to achieve some of the targets of SDG 10 too, which is aimed at reducing inequality within and among countries. In ‘The World’s Largest Lesson’, an animated film that can be used to introduce students to the SDGs, much emphasis is placed on how young people’s creativity can be tapped to solve some of the world’s problems. This chapter focuses on how English language learning and teaching can harness creative activities as a means of targeting the fourth sustainable development goal. In this chapter, creativity is conceived of as a democratic phenomenon that all teachers and students can access and which may involve the reconfiguration of already existing elements rather than merely the creation of something out of nothing. Moreover, creativity is seen as something that ‘is born of discipline and thrives in a context of constraints’. The harnessing of creativity in the classroom is deemed fundamental, given the paradox of it being ‘at the heart of learning but not at the heart of education’. Through a series of activities that seek to mobilise students’ creative thinking, the chapter describes how the English language classroom can serve as an incubator for an awareness of the need to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.