‘Educating for a shared future’: insights from the 2026 Education World Forum

A summary of some of the key discussions and announcements during the Education World Forum.

Now more than ever the importance of international dialogue and partnerships cannot be understated. The Education World Forum is the world’s largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, brought together with multilateral organisations and industry partners to ‘reimagine education’ to tackle some of our most pressing global challenges including (but not limited to) ‘escalating geopolitical tensions, widening inequalities, intensifying climate crises and rapid technological change.’ The year’s forum took place on the 17th-20th May in London, UK.

The agenda’s themes were:

• Peace – examining practical strategies, policies and learning approaches to bridge differences, strengthen social cohesion and contribute to more peaceful and resilient communities.
• Planet – discussions on equipping learners with climate literacy, and the knowledge, skills and mindset to drive sustainable solutions.
• Purpose – focus on human-centred approaches that empower teachers and learners to harness technology and innovation responsibly.
• Pathways – highlighting strategies to create flexible and diverse pathways that respond to different learners’ needs, enabling all learners to access high-quality learning and lifelong opportunities.

What happened during the forum?

Here are a few key conversations and announcements from the forum that we’ve heard about so far. We recommend following Education World Forum on its social media platforms for more updates.

Global action on peace

“There is no more urgent question for us to address than how education can help build a more peaceful world.” – Qun Chen

During the forum, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education, Qun Chen, called for global action on peace during his keynote address. In his talk, he recounted how UNESCO was founded in the aftermath of World War II. On seeing such destruction, UNESCO was ‘created to decide what kind of society we wanted to build together’. He described the current global landscape as “particularly precarious”, highlighting instability driven by conflict, inequalities, environmental disasters, digital disinformation and ‘democratic backsliding’. He talked about the strain education systems are under and persistent gaps, highlighting figures such as:

• 273 million children remain out of school
• 450 million young people lack basic skills
• 739 million adults are illiterate
• 1 in 4 schools lack electricity
• a global shortage of 44 million teachers
• children leaving school without basic schools will cost the global economy $21 trillion in lost lifetime earnings
• low-income and lower-middle-income countries face an annual education financing gap of $97 billion.

He also highlighted the continued work from UNESCO, including the upcoming ‘Transforming Education Summit +4’.  And in his closing, he called for collective action, explaining that, “Peace can only be built together – and education is where we begin.”

Closing the girls’ education gap

“Every girl belongs in school — not someday, not in another 20 years, but now.” – Malala Yousafzai

U.N. Messenger of Peace and education activist, Malala Yousufzai, took to the stage to urge ministers to take urgent action to close the girls’ education gap. There are currently 122 million girls out of school – a staggering number – and, as Malala mentioned, is equivalent to the entire population of Egypt or Japan. Malala pointedly shared with attendees: “Maybe 122 million feels less staggering when you know that it’s made up of girls around the world. Maybe they are easier to write-off in rural communities and conflict zones.” This is an important point to make when, for example, you see the UK’s foreign aid funding reaching its ‘lowest levels since 2008’, with ‘total spend down £1bn on the previous year’.

Malala implored ministers to look beyond the practicalities of policy-making that can see change taking years or decades to happen, and explained that we need to be able to imagine the world as it could be and ‘hold a picture of it so clearly that you cannot look away’. Malala talked about the secondary school she built for girls in 2018 –  Shangla Girls Schools, Pakistan –  sharing how the school now has 1,050 students and its high school students have even achieved some of the top marks in their exams in the province. She talked about how determination was needed because, at every step of the way, she was told it couldn’t be done, but she didn’t let it stop her. She asked for that same determination from leaders: “When you leave this room, I hope you are even more determined to close the gap between that vision and our current reality.”

Creating an International SEND Alliance

“Today, I am proud to announce that I will convene an International SEND Alliance in 2027, a coalition of countries, coming together across a series of summits, to chart a common path forward. Under a shared mission to deliver opportunity for all children with SEND around the world.” – UK Education Secretary, Bridget Philipson.

Phillipson called on global leaders to join an international alliance to support children with SEND. The alliance is designed to draw on international best practice – inviting nations to share experiences of effective strategies and systems, and to work on a shared mission to support and provide opportunities for children with SEND. The alliance will meet at events such as Bett, the next Education World Forum, and the International Summit on the Teaching Profession.

The alliance will complement the UK’s SEND reforms and Education For All Bill where the Government will be putting into place changes such as Individual Support Plans for every child with SEND, inclusive mainstream investment (included inclusion bases) and the ‘Experts at Hand’ service (professionals to support schools such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists).

Phillipson noted that, while the way different countries approach supporting SEND learners differs, we share many common challenges. She mentioned some common trends:

• Many countries are trying to be more responsive to need and less reliant on narrow models.
• They are trying to focus more support into mainstream education.
• They are finding it difficult to join up different support services.

New qualification for refugees and displaced young people

“When young people are forced to leave school and flee, it’s not only their past they leave behind, but their future too. Working with Alsama Project, we will help them take back their futures through a new global qualification that will open pathways to universities, vocational programmes and employment. Displaced youth across the globe need models that reflect their realities – and the world needs their talents.” – Jane Mann, Managing Director, Partnership for Education, Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Cambridge University Press & Assessment and NGO Alsama Project signed an agreement in the presence of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; UNESCO; and the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education – to work together on a new qualification for refugees and displaced young people. The new G12++ qualification is designed to help give displaced youth a pathway to further education and skilled employment to help tackle the exclusion many face from university, training and employment.

Key statistics

To understand the scale of the issue this partnership is working to address, here are a few key statistics:

• The UK has over 690,00 forcibly displaced people from 164 different countries.
• Globally, there are 117.3 million forcibly displaced people and 49 million of this group are children.
• Only 9% of refugees around the world attend higher education, compared with the average 42% of the global population.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment and Alsama Project are aiming to roll out the qualification globally. The curriculum will focus on developing critical thinking, soft skills and potential and will be relevant to a learner’s refugee context.

Other themes

The British Educational Supplier’s Association (BESA) shared some of the other key themes from the event:

• The need to distinguish between pedagogically sound, appropriate use of EdTech in the classroom for teaching and learning, versus concerns over excessive screen time and the negative impacts of social media.

• How best to use AI to support teachers, to drive innovation and provide insights at government level.

• Using technology to scale educational transformation, with a particular focus this year on platforms that provide data overview so that the impact of change initiatives can be measured, monitored and replicated on a wide scale.

• The ongoing global teacher shortage and its implications, plus potential solutions.

They are also working on some exciting international partnerships, which BESA members can learn more about here.

Learn more

Education World Forum’s website

References

1. Education World Forum (2026) ‘ Education World Forum: The world’s largest gathering of education and skills ministers’. Available at: https://www.theewf.org/ (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
2. UNSECO (2026) ‘UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education calls for global action on peace at the Education World Forum’. Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unescos-assistant-director-general-education-calls-global-action-peace-education-world-forum (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
3. UNSECO (2026) ‘Our history’. Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/about-us/history (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
4. Malala Fund (2026) ‘Malala Yousafzai speaks at the Education World Forum 2026’. Available at: https://malala.org/news-and-voices/malala-yousafzai-speak-at-the-education-world-forum-2026 (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
5. Grierson (2026) ‘ UK spending on foreign aid hits lowest level since 2008‘. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/09/uk-foreign-aid-spending-lowest-since-2008 (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
6. Gov.UK (2026) ‘Education Secretary speech at Education World Forum’. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-speech-at-education-world-forum (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
7. GovWire (2026) ‘New international alliance to support children with SEND’. Available at: https://www.govwire.co.uk/news/department-for-education/new-international-alliance-to-support-children-with-send-g1695947 (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
8.  FE News (2026) ‘Cambridge and Alsama Project partner on new school-leaver qualification to help refugees and displaced youth access university, training and jobs worldwide’. Available at: https://www.fenews.co.uk/education/cambridge-and-alsama-project-partner-on-new-school-leaver-qualification-to-help-refugees-and-displaced-youth-access-university-training-and-jobs-worldwide/ (Accessed: 28 May 2026)
9. BESA (2026) ‘BESA International Update: 22/05/2025’. Available at: https://www.besa.org.uk/insight/besa-international-update-22-05-2025/ (Accessed: 28 May 2026)