Education for Sustainable Development Country Status Reports: An evaluation of national implementation during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development in East and Southeast Asia

This report was developed as part of a series of three research publications on the research project led by UNU-IAS and IGES on monitoring and evaluation of education for sustainable development, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. This report specifically focuses on the study of ESD implementation at a national level and tries to identify the important success factors and leverage points in ensuring effective ESD systems. The information contained here within is based on primary research collected in collaboration with national ESD focal points from seven countries in East and Southeast Asia based on the main data collection method of the ESD country status surveys and supported by additional information collected during the two reporting and capacity building workshops.

Section Two of this report presents the seven ESD Country Status Reports. Each country status reports details the information as collected from the survey, and thus also demonstrates the extent to which countries can currently report on their ESD implementation. As more systematic methods are developed to support M&E of ESD, the expectation is that the quality of such reporting will be enhanced. Following the country reports, a series of seven tables are presented highlighting the findings from these country reports across the major sectors investigated during this research process.

Section Three of this report provides a comparative assessment of the implementation status of ESD across the seven countries. A capacity analysis is then conducted in order to identify key system leverage points for ESD implementation. In the subsequent report on developing an M&E of ESD framework, these leverage points will be paralleled with the findings on ESD learning performance in order to gain a better understanding of the correlation between implementation and educational outcomes, or more generally between ESD process and practice. Finally, this section concludes with a discussion of general findings from the assessment of the ESD country status reports, and some recommendations for common improvements to ESD implementation based on these findings.