Narrowing the education data gap

A data map for the ASEAN region.

The ASEAN-UK SAGE Programme has developed a framework of indicators to track progress and understand underlying factors that explain differences in key outcomes for girls, women and marginalised groups in the ASEAN region. It is based on an in-depth analysis of available data, gaps and trends.

Narrowing the data gap is a key priority of the ASEAN-UK SAGE programme and the Initiative for ASEAN Integration. Understanding data availability, gaps and trends can support the region to address inequities across the lifespan.

In 2024, the ASEAN-UK SAGE programme released this data gap map to visualise the availability of public data against the framework of indicators at a thematic and country-level. These indicators have been categorised across 3 themes, 9 sub-themes and 5 key stages of education for the 10 ASEAN countries and Timor-Leste.

Circles within each cell reflect the proportion of indicators for each sub-theme for which there is available data within the specified timeframe: 2019-2023 for education and economic indicators and 2014-2023 for social indicators. The size of the circle increases as the proportion of data increases.

For example, in Cambodia, data is available across 8 of the 9 sub-themes. Hovering on the first dot under ‘participation and progress’ shows that Cambodia has data available from 2019-2023 for all 12 indicators. For ‘learning', Cambodia has data available for 4 of the 6 indicators.

Clicking a circle opens a country-level data gap map, that can be filtered by country across 5 stages of education. This data map can be filtered by country.

In 2025, the data map was extended to include trends over time. This is part of the ASEAN-UK programme’s commitment to expand the data map to include disaggregated data and present analysis across the indicators to show trends across sets of indicators, countries and time periods. For each country, data has been visualised across selected indicators and stage of education, covering the period from 2000 to 2023.

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View data map by country

View data trends by country

EDUCATION

ECONOMIC

Country

Participation and progress (2019-2023)

Learning
(2019-2023)

Out-of-school (2019-2023)

Education investment (2019-2023)

Digital access and skills (2019-2023)

Employment (2019-2023)

Methodology

This work is informed by a conceptual framework that recognises that equitable access to quality lifelong learning for girls, women, and marginalised groups, can support educational, social and economic empowerment.

The selection of indicators is underpinned by set criteria relevant to the education priorities of ASEAN, the ASEAN-UK SAGE Programme, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The indicators are comparable, and data sources are credible, readily available and can be disaggregated. They also build on existing monitoring processes.

The scan of data availability involved a range of data sources:

DHS: The Demographic and Health Surveys
ILO: International Labour Organization data portal
MICS: Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys
PISA: Programme for International Student Assessment
SEA-PLM: Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics
TIMMS: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
UIS: UNESCO Institute for Statistics data portals and sdg4-data.uis.unesco.org

Where possible, indicators have been drawn from household surveys. Household surveys are the only source of data covering girls, women and marginalised groups outside of the formal education system, making them critical to understanding equity in education.

Where to next?

Narrowing the data gap can support the ASEAN region to better track and monitor progress, and address gender inequities for girls, women and marginalised groups.

Since 2024, the ASEAN-UK SAGE programme has:

Expanded the gap map to include additional data sources and information on quality, and levels of disaggregation.
Developed in-depth case studies for Cambodia, Lao PDR and Timor-Leste using the framework to provide insights into how outcomes for girls, women and marginalised groups evolve over the lifespan.

Partners can continue working together to:

Support regional and national partners to explore ways to effectively monitor education, social and economic outcomes across the lifespan.
Conduct macro-level analysis across the indicators to understand trends across sets of indicators, countries and time periods.
Work with countries to combine data sources and/or link databases relating to participation, learning, financing and social demographics, to enhance the targeting of policies and interventions and evaluate their effectiveness.