Manos Antoninis, Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report, UNESCO

In this episode of EWF Conversations, EWF Programme Director Fabrizio Trifirò talks to Manos Antoninis, Director of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report at UNESCO. Antoninis reflects on the history of the GEM Report and on the main findings of the first report in the "Countdown to 2030" series. He highlights the paradox of rising out-of-school populations alongside improving completion rates, driven by a dramatic decline in repetition rates within education systems, and emphasizes the necessity of equitable financing, noting that fewer than one in ten countries currently have a strong equity focus in their education spending. He discusses the methodological challenges of collecting quality data to inform international benchmarking and the importance of focusing on "what matters", such as values and justice, over quick-fix solutions.