Report is mandated by UNESCO’s ‘Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action’ for monitoring and reporting on SDG 4 (Quality education) and in the other SDGs.

Key findings

• Disruption of Education Systems: Over the past 20 years, schools were closed in at least 75% of the extreme weather events, impacting 5 million people or more.
• India Related: A study in India found that rainfall shocks in the first 15 years of life negatively affected vocabulary at age five and mathematics & non-cognitive skills at age 15. 
  • Fast Progress: In improving out‑of‑school rate of primary children.
  • Slow Progress: In Out‑of‑school rate (lower secondary), and Gender gap in completion rate (upper secondary).
• Education’s Role: Its role in combating climate change is not given the space it deserves in international agendas. 
  • SDG 4 was addressed in only 2 of 72 transnational climate initiatives.

Key Recommendations

• Climate change education needs to be more deeply integrated into the curriculum, across multiple subjects, and with adequate educator training support.
• Prioritise Climate-resilient education infrastructure. 
• Recognize education's role in developing mitigation and adaptation solutions to climate change challenges.
• Include investment in education under climate finance programs.
• Engage with non-education stakeholders for education to be included in climate plans and financing. 

WHO has released the report titled ‘From Loneliness to Social Connection: Charting a Path to Healthier Societies. 

• This report by the WHO (World Health Organisation) Commission on Social Connection highlights the impact of social isolation and loneliness on health, well-being, and society.

What is Social Connection and Disconnection?

• Social connection is about the many ways we relate to and interact with others and it includes family, friends, classmates, coworkers, neighbours.
• Social disconnection occurs when a person doesn’t have enough social contact, doesn’t feel supported by the relationships, or have strained or negative relationships. Forms of social disconnection includes: 
  • Loneliness (discrepancy between one’s desired and actual experiences of connection) and
  • Social Isolation (having very few relationships or not seeing people often enough).

 Key Highlights of Report

• Widespread Social Disconnection: About 1 in 6 people feel lonely (2014–2023) with young people (ages 13-29) feeling the loneliest. 
  • Up to 1 in 3 older adults (between 1990-2022) while about 1 in 4 teenagers (between 2003-2018) are socially isolated. 
• Disparities: In low-income countries, about 24% of people feel lonely while in richer countries, 11% feel lonely. 
• Impacts of Social Disconnection: Physical Health (about 871,000 global deaths (2014–2019) linked to loneliness), Mental Health (Depression, Anxiety, Dementia etc.), Socio-Economic (Poor Academic Performance and Productivity Loss).

About PGI

• Genesis: PGI was launched in 2017 and later revamped as PGI 2.0 in 2021.
• Released by: Ministry of Education
• Data sources: Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), National Achievement Survey (NAS), PM-POSHAN portal, PRABAND portal and Vidyanjali Portal.
• Purpose: PGI holistically assesses the performance of school education systems across States and UTs.
• Structure: PGI structure comprises of total weightage of 1000 points across 73 indicators, which are grouped under 2 Categories viz., Outcome and Governance & Management.
  • These categories are further divided into 6 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure & Facilities (IF), Equity (E), Governance Processes (GP) and Teacher Education & Training (TET).
• Evaluation: Across 10 Grades out of 1000 points.

Key Findings of the Report

• No state/UT achieved the top four grades (Daksh, Utkarsh, Atti-Uttam, Uttam).
• Top Performer: Only Chandigarh attained Grade Prachesta-1.
• Lowest Performer: Meghalaya is the only state in the tenth grade (Akanshi-3).
• Inter-State Disparity: The report highlights that this disparity has reduced. 
• Overall Trends:
  • 24 states/UTs improved scores in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23.
  • 12 states/UTs including Bihar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, etc. saw score declines.

Recently, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its State of World Population (SWP) 2025 report titled ‘The real fertility crisis: The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world’.

About the Report

• The report argues that the actual global fertility crisis is not one of overpopulation or underpopulation, but rather a crisis in reproductive agency.
  • Reproductive agency is the capacity to exercise informed, empowered decision-making over one’s reproduction. It requires an enabling environment in which individuals and couples can make choices unfettered by legal, political, economic and normative constraints.
• It also highlights various unfulfilled fertility aspirations such as unintended pregnancies, underachieved pregnancies, etc.
• It calls for a policy shift regarding population to prioritize individual rights and choices, building trust through stable, rights-based conditions that enable people to have the families they desire, rather than trying to engineer population size.

Portal was launched by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development at the National Consultation on Gender Budgeting.

About Gender Budgeting Knowledge Hub Portal

• It is a centralized repository of tools including policy briefs, best practices, and gender-disaggregated data.
• Intended for use by central and state government ministries/departments and stakeholders.
• Features online application portal for submitting proposals for gender budgeting training and capacity building programmes.

About Gender Budgeting (GB)

• It is an approach that integrates gender equality into government’s planning and budgeting processes and analyses how budgets can promote gender equality.
• GB involves a thorough analysis of Government budgets to -
  • establish its gender differential impacts.
  • prioritise and frame commitments and corresponding actions; and 
  • ensure budget allocations for gender equality commitments