Representing the UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago, specialist Alejandro Vera presented the document Challenges in harmonising administrative data for monitoring inclusive education, a contribution that focuses on one of the main challenges in the region: having reliable and comparable information on students with disabilities.
The study draws on the experience of the Regional Educational Information System on Students with Disabilities (SIRIED), an initiative promoted by UNESCO within the framework of the Ibero-American Intergovernmental Network for Cooperation in the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs (RIINEE). This system has made it possible to convert the administrative records used by each country—which are often different from one another—into a set of 28 regionally comparable indicators.
One of SIRIED’s main achievements has been to generate technical agreements with the 16 participating countries in order to move towards common standards, without interrupting existing national systems. This experience shows that it is possible to build a robust regional data architecture through international cooperation and the strengthening of national capacities.
The document also identifies persistent challenges, including difficulties in the identification of disabilities, limited comparability across countries, and the predominance of indicators focused on access rather than on complete educational pathways, retention or learning achievement.
Despite progress in the production of educational statistics, the region continues to face significant limitations in the availability, comparability and use of data on this population. These gaps hinder the monitoring of the right to education and the follow-up of SDG 4, particularly in its dimension of equity and inclusion.
In this context, UNESCO reaffirms the importance of strengthening educational information systems as an enabling condition for moving towards more inclusive systems. “Guaranteeing the right to education of persons with disabilities requires something fundamental: better information, better use of data and more cooperation among countries,” Alejandro Vera highlighted in his presentation.
Through this initiative, UNESCO and its regional partners are moving forward in building a post-2030 monitoring agenda that prioritises the production of quality, comparable and decision-oriented data, thereby helping to ensure that no student is left outside education systems.
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/better-information-inclusive-education-regional-progress-monitoring-students-disabilities?hub=701
