In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and within it, SDG 4 as their aspiration for educational development by 2030. The 2030 Agenda was hailed as an unprecedented achievement by the United Nations (Benavot & Naidoo, 2018) and sparked a myriad of initiatives, reforms and strategic reorientations, at all levels, international, regional and national. International and regional organizations vied for the so-called “custodianship”, passport to becoming a global authority over an SDG target, and re-legitimized themselves by enacting strategic redirections that would make them all the more relevant during the SDG era (Elfert & Ydesen, 2023). National governments reviewed and aligned their education policies with the commitments they made at the international level, and they engaged with critical changes to allow their national statistical systems to respond to the unprecedented demand for numbers. Universities and academics introduced new research foci and requirements, developed institutional policies to foster sustainability and prioritized research endeavors associated with the SDGs. Multilateral and bilateral donors reframed their strategic visions as testimony of their support to this global movement. An entire ecosystem was set in motion where governments, international organization, philanthropies, companies and civil society would act in concert towards a global common future for the next 15 years.

The new agenda was said to have addressed issues and concerns that surrounded its predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals and the Education for All goals (Benavot & Naidoo, 2018), and, at the time, little room was left for critically engaging with the features, content and political processes that surrounded SDG 4. After 10 years of implementation however, ghosts of the past have resurfaced. Neglected goals and targets (Rose & Sayed, 2024), ineffectiveness of leading international organizations to foster progress (Beeharry, 2021), impending failure (for some targets for the second time in 30 years), unwarranted interpretations of targets (Montjourides, 2023) and strategic gaming are on the list of issues that can threaten the relevance and legitimacy of these global endeavors. This symposium  is the second part of a two-parts symposium that gathers academics who have questioned the legitimacy of Sustainable Development Goal 4 from various perspectives and sheds light on the evolution of global and regional governance in education, raising concerns about the fact that international education agendas are either improperly implemented, or just built and used as another strategic instrument of geopolitical influence, in either case failing to effectively contributing to building education for the future of all.

Building on the first part, entitled “Exploring the Democratic Legitimacy of the Education 2030 - SDG 4 Agenda: Whose Voices, Which Processes and for What Results?”, this second part engages with the sociological legitimacy (Agné, 2018; Scholte & Tallberg, 2018) of SDG 4 and discusses the extent to which the Education goal, as well as key actors, are perceived as legitimate. Legitimacy is also about audiences’ perception and beliefs towards any governance arrangement, whereby popular legitimacy becomes a prerequisite for authority and effectiveness of an international education agenda (Tallberg et al., 2018). The discussion will consider the challenges faced by SDG 4 in maintaining its authority and effectiveness, highlighting the potential erosion of support that may arise following the neglect, absence or poor conceptualization of specific education priorities on the one hand, and the use of the SDG 4 agenda as a legitimating instrument by international or regional organizations on the other hand. This part aims to showcase the importance of a cohesive support by all actors to the international education agenda if it is meant to foster a collective effort towards a global educational future.

Agné, H. (2018). How Normative or Sociological Should It Be? In Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences. Oxford University Press. Beeharry, G. (2021). The pathway to progress on SDG 4 requires the global education architecture to focus on foundational learning and to hold ourselves accountable for achieving it. International Journal of Educational Development, 82, 102375. Benavot, A., & Naidoo, J. (2018). A New Era for Education in the Global Development Agenda. Childhood Education, 94(3), 10–15. Elfert, M., & Ydesen, C. (2023). Global Governance of Education: An Introduction. In Global Governance of Education: The Historical and Contemporary Entanglements of UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank (pp. 1–22). Springer International Publishing. Montjourides, P. (2023). Is this the Future We Want? Understanding the Legitimacy of International Education Agendas. The Example of Equity in Education [PhD Thesis, Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository]. Rose, P., & Sayed, Y. (2024). Assessing progress in tracking progress towards the education Sustainable Development Goal: Global citizenship education and teachers missing in action? International Journal of Educational Development, 104. Tallberg, J., Bäckstrand, K., & Scholte, J. A. (2018). Legitimacy in Global Governance. In Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences (Oxford sholarship online). Oxford University Press.