Education

Within the overall framework of Education for All and the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD), UNESCO’s role is to coordinate, stimulate, catalyze and technically support actions at the international, regional and national level.

The Organization’s functions include advocacy, standard-setting and benchmarking, acting as a clearing house and dissemination of effective practices, policy and programme advice and support, capacity-building, research, literacy assessment, monitoring and evaluation, and partnership building.

A renewed vision of literacy

UNESCO does not advocate a single "model" of literacy. The understanding of who is literate and who is illiterate has evolved considerably over the years, giving rise to new implications for both policies and programmes. The uses of literacy are changing rapidly in contemporary societies in response to broad social, economic and technological changes.

UNESCO’s concept of literacy has moved beyond the simple notion of a set of technical skills for reading, writing and calculating to one that encompasses multiple dimensions of these competencies. In acknowledging recent economic, political and social transformations- including globalization and the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) - UNESCO recognizes that there are many practices of literacy embedded in different cultural processes, personal circumstances and collective structures.

Literacy is central to all levels of learning, through all delivery modes. Literacy is an issue that concerns everybody.

Main Actors

UNESCO’s activities are implemented by various sections in UNESCO’s Headquarters in Paris, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and a wide network of UNESCO Regional Bureaux and Cluster and Field Office.

UNESCO also works with a wide range of partners, including relevant agencies of the UN family, universities and research institutions, and civil society.