Francesc Pedró: Insights from UNESCO

The United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development has set a clear target for education: "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" (SDG Goal 4). To achieve this objective, work at UNESCO – the UN agency responsible for education – is going on tirelessly.

On 18-20 May, higher education experts and leaders gathered at the UNESCO World higher Education Conference in Barcelona to collectively reflect on the right course of action to ensure tertiary education meets its 2030 deadline. To find out what was discussed at the conference, the EAIE chatted with Francesc Pedró, the Director of UNESCO IESALC, to learn more about how global higher education is expected to change in order to achieve SDG Goal 4, what strategies and action plans are being considered to attain this extraordinary goal and why it is important that all voices are heard. To hear more, tune in to the EAIE Podcast!

About Francesco Pedró

Francesc Pedró is the Director of the UNESCO Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), the sole specialised institute of the United Nations system with the mission to contribute to the improvement of higher education in member States. Prior to taking up his role in 2019, Francesc led UNESCO’s education policy team in Paris, where he worked on ensuring member states’ education policies aligned with SDG 4-Education 2030. Prior to UNESCO, he was Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), Professor of comparative education and public policies at Pompeu Fabra University, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Educational Research and Innovation at the Open University of Catalonia.

Additional resources

For further insights into the topics touched on in this episode, the following resources may be of interest:

→UNESCO World Higher Education Conference

→Futures of Higher Education

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