Measuring Education for the Millennium Development Goals: Reflections on Targets, Indicators, and a Post-2015 Framework

Education has a prominent position in the current Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework; targets on schooling are attached to two of the goals. However, from a human development perspective, the narrow framing of the education targets and indicators in the MDGs had perverse consequences, stemming from the omission of salient aspects of quality, context, and equity. The selected targets limited the capacity of the education sector to support other MDGs. In thinking about indicators for a post-2015 framework, this paper considers the history of how and why the indicators for MDG 2 were selected and puts forward some critical reflections on two alternative indicators for the education goal in a post-2015 framework.