Narrowing the education data gap

A data gap 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 and gaps.

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

This data gap map visualises publicly available data against the framework of indicators. These indicators have been categorised across 3 themes and 9 sub-themes 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. The size of the circle increases as the proportion of data increases.

For example, in Cambodia, data is available across all 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 ‘out-of-school', Cambodia has data available for 4 of the 5 indicators.

Data sources include household surveys, learning assessments, data portals, and data files.

Clicking a circle opens the corresponding country data map showing 5 stages of education. This data map can be filtered by country.

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View our data map 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)

Observations

The data gap map shows that there is more data available on education, compared to the social and economic themes.

There are clear data gaps in the region on learning. No country in the region has reportable data for the early primary minimum proficiency levels (MPLs) as specified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4, Target 4.1.1(a). Timor-Leste has not participated in any large-scale and comparable learning assessments.

More safety and wellbeing data is needed, particularly comparable data on school safety and gender-based violence, and child labour.

Data on digital access and skills is also limited, and there is no publicly available comparable data for the early stages of education.

If data on government investment for each stage of education was readily available, it would provide valuable insights for education budgets within the region.

A clear limitation of this initial phase of work is the reliance on publicly available data. Countries may have data that could fill some of the gaps identified. Also, while data sources, such as household surveys, have been selected for their potential to elicit insights into equity, the quality of data and levels of disaggregation available have not been examined at this stage. This will be an important next step given national data can mask lower-level trends and exclusions, especially for the most marginalised children.

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.

Partners must work together to:

Support regional and national partners to explore ways to effectively monitor education, social and economic outcomes across the lifespan.
Expand the gap map to include additional data sources and information on quality, and levels of disaggregation.
Present macro-level analysis across the indicators to show trends across sets of indicators, countries and time periods.
Develop 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.
Work with countries to combine data sources and/or link databases relating to participation, learning, financing and social demographics, as part of a pilot that aims to enhance the targeting of policies and interventions and evaluate their effectiveness.