Since 2022, the Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe has collected and analysed UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data to systematically monitor SDG 4 indicators across 14 countries in South-East Europe and parts of the Mediterranean.14 This undertaking focuses on key dimensions of access, equity, relevance, quality, cost and financing in education. Through comparative analysis across education systems in these 14 countries, the Bureau identifies trends, highlights data gaps and assesses the impact of investments in education.
14 List of 14 countries under purview of the Regional Bureau: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Türkiye.
Over time, the quality and consistency of data across the region have steadily improved. Countries have updated indicators and addressed data gaps, enabling a more comprehensive view of both the achievements and challenges. These improvements reflect closer alignment among national stakeholders and growing trust in data generation and use.
Leveraging partnerships, a core principle of SDG 17, has proved essential in transforming education systems across South-East Europe. This summary illustrates how partnerships have shaped progress, strengthened policy dialogue and generated impact across the region.
High-performing education systems continue to produce steady results in the region; higher investment is associated with better learning outcomes and greater trust in education systems; and improved data informs both progress and remaining gaps.
High-performing education systems continue to demonstrate strong performance: Croatia, Malta, Serbia, Slovenia and Türkiye perform well academically, according to OECD PISA 2022 results. This reflects strong policy alignment and institutional reliability.
Investment matters: in countries with data availability, higher investment in education correlates with better learning outcomes and greater trust in education systems, reinforcing the link between investment, outcome and trust.
Data availability is improving: Albania and the Republic of Moldova have strenghthened net enrollment data and tracking government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
These key findings point to an underlying enabling factor for an effective education system: public trust. Across the region, high-performing education systems are not only well-resourced but are also perceived as being competent, fair and transparent about outcomes, in line with the OECD’s trust framework.15
15 Key Dimensions of the OECD Trust Framework includes reliability, integrity, openness and responsiveness. Available here: https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/trust-in-government.html
Slovenia: the legislative framework and the National Programme for Children embed principles of quality, fairness and inclusiveness, alongside strong safeguards for supportive, safe and non-discriminatory school environments.
Malta: the 2024–2030 National Education Strategy was developed through more than 200 stakeholder consultations and places equity and quality at its core.
In the context of South-East Europe, education partnerships take the form of structured, multi-stakeholder collaborations grounded in integrity, transparency and shared values. Through inclusive decision-making and open use of evidence, partnerships function as a key mechanism for building and maintaining trust in education systems.
Yet, SDG 17 indicators largely overlook this dimension and tend to focus more on formal arrangements and financing, rather than on the quality of partnerships and their role in building trust.
Partnerships provide a structured way to bring actors together, create a shared responsibility and promote greater transparency in decision-making. This reflects the underlying rationale of SDG 17, which highlights multi-stakeholder partnerships as vehicles to mobilize and share knowledge, expertise and resources to support the SDGs.
Factors that enhance trust in building partnerships include:
1. Integrity and clear strategic frameworks: partnerships with aligned objectives ensure that stakeholders act with commitment towards implementation.
2. Ownership and transparency: partnerships with transparent and regular communication about data utility and limitations help prevent selective use of evidence.
3. Cultural awareness and adaptive learning: listening across institutional cultures, acknowledging contextual differences and learning from setbacks are essential to understanding the full data picture and sustaining trust.
Partnerships anchored in these principles bring clarity to decision-making, make evidence actionable and sustain progress, promoting trust and robust learning outcomes.
The level of partnership engagement is reflected in SDG indicator 17.16.1, which tracks whether countries report on how stakeholders work together. This could be complemented with qualitative data and insights on coordination mechanisms and regular joint review of education data.
Monitoring progress towards SDG 17 is a systemic process that requires relevant measures to capture how partnerships function. Progress is reflected in continuous improvements in institutional alignment, data completeness and stakeholder coordination. To better capture this reality, it is worth considering an alternative approach to measuring, including the introduction of two new indicators:
a. Assess data completeness and transparency among stakeholders and across SDG domains
Fragmented or siloed data often signal weak partnership ecosystems. Conversely, robust cross-institutional data-sharing, with the UIS serving as data custodian, reflects effective data governance. In practice, this could mean assessing whether countries:
Publish reports where education data are systematically linked with other sectors (e.g. health or social protection).
Make methodologies and assessments of limitations publicly available.
Provide short, accessible summaries of key education statistics for non-technical audiences.
These are all indicators of whether data are being treated as a shared asset across institutions.
b. Identify shared data insights and governance markers of partnership practice
Beyond completeness, it is important to understand how data are jointly interpreted and used. One entry point is identifying co-produced data narratives through cross-referencing data with multi-stakeholder partners. In education, this could mean verifying whether national education strategies:
Explicitly include a dedicated section on multi-stakeholder engagement or data-sharing aims that go beyond technical circles.
Have regular joint review forums where ministries, statistical offices, researchers and representatives of educators, youth and communities discuss education data together.
Present data in inclusive ways, for example, by using accessible language, visualizations or shorter public summaries.
These indicators do not require new data sets. They can be identified through desk research of existing policy documents, providing a practical means to assess how partnership practices are reflected in institutional processes and governance arrangements.
SDG 17 is a foundational enabler for all the SDGs. Its essence lies in building trust, increasing capacity and creating collaborative ecosystems.
Insights from the South East Europe region show that partnerships must be reimagined as ongoing practices of trust-building. Ad hoc projects, particularly those driven by external funding and not embedded in long-term partnerships, may have limited impact beyond the project cycle.
Partnerships in education function as an analytical lens, grounded in trust and informed by data monitoring to move beyond surface-level observations and better understand underlying educational challenges.
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Palais des Nations, Geneva
