This paper will argue that the SDG 4 agenda faces a legitimacy problem as, despite rhetoric to the contrary, it fails to support the rights-based approach to education which constituted the cornerstone of the post-World War II international normative framework. Based on a review of historical and contemporary normative documents relating to the UN human rights and SDG 4 framework, policy reports, scholarly literature and web-based information, I will explore this legitimacy problem by focusing on two issues: 1) The instrumentalist approach to education; and 2) the democratic deficit owing to the rise of corporate actors and multistakeholder governance that dominate the SDG 4 agenda. With regard to point 1), there are major drawbacks in the realization of education as a right. Inequalities in participation persist, and privatization constitutes a serious challenge to the concept of education as a “public” or “common good”. Given the priority of the SDG 4 agenda on learning outcomes and measurement, a key governance tool in the era of SDG 4 is benchmarking. The World Bank’s SABER and the OECD’s PISA are examples of this. The logic of datafication, rankings, and “what works” approaches leads to a homogenization of education and channels efforts and resources into the operationalisation of metrics rather than into improving the quality of education (Benavot & Smith, 2020). The influence of the World Bank and the OECD in the SDG 4 governance structure promotes instrumentalist approaches to education that undermine “a rights-based understanding of quality” (Sayed & Moriarty, 2020). SDG 4 indicators fail to monitor the extent to which education is realized as a right (Wulff, 2017). With regard to point 2), another serious challenge to the rights-based approach and democratic legitimacy of the SDG 4 governance architecture is the rise of transnational corporations, philanthropic foundations and multi-stakeholder groups. An example is the Varkey Foundation that organizes and funds high-level events such as the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai that offer platforms for the corporate agendas of the EdTech industry and that are endorsed by UNESCO, the OECD and the Global Partnership for Education, bypassing formal SDG 4 governance structures (Wulff, 2019; Ridge 2019). The paper will also address how stakeholders distract from the democratic deficit, such as by promoting seemingly “humanistic” agendas such as “well-being”, and employing crisis narratives, such as the discourse of the “learning crisis”.

Benavot, A., & Smith, W. C. (2020). Reshaping Quality and Equity. Grading Goal Four. Ridge, N. (2019). Strange bedfellows at the Global Education and Skills Forum: Unions, politicians, multilaterals, and corporate philantropy. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate 6. Sayed, Y., & Moriarty, K. (2020). Chapter 9. SDG 4 and the ‘Education Quality Turn.’ In Grading Goal Four. Tensions, Threats, and Opportunities in the Sustainable Development Goal on Quality Education. Brill. Wulff, A. (2017). Cashing in on SDG4. In Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2017. Reclaiming policies for the public (pp. 57-59). Report by the Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Wulff, A. (2019). The ideological battle over SDG4. In Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2019. Reshaping governance for sustainability (pp. 113-116). Global Civil Society Report on the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.