Education is a right with corresponding obligations for duty-bearers. Compliance must be assessed and monitored with appropriate indicators. Traditional development indicators evaluate education as a basic human need to be checked against development goals; right to education indicators aim to measure the extent to which States fulfill their legal human rights obligations.

Since 2008, the Right to Education Project (RTE) has aimed to develop and operationalise a set of indicators based on international human rights law.  RTE developed over 200 indicators intended to be used as a tool to evaluate States’ progress towards the full realisation of the right to education, to identify violations of the right to education, and to enable civil society to hold governments to account for their obligations regarding education.  The indicators serve as a foundation for RTE’s work – both as a means for promoting monitoring and advocacy with civil society and as a tool that is imbedded throughout RTE’s work more generally.

In 2010, RTE and ActionAid co-developed the Promoting Rights in Schools tool, which utilises RTE’s indicators to monitor the right to education at the local school level.  The PRS serves as ActionAid’s core education programming and is aimed at both popularising education as a human right and as a means to empower local communities to seek accountability on the right to education.

In 2015, RTE is planning to launch an interactive, online guide on monitoring the right to education.  Once completed, the guide will provide step-by-step guidance for civil society to monitor the right to education and present a practical tool for selecting and applying RTE’s indicators.  The monitoring guide and other additional monitoring resources will be available on this page.