By Priyadarshani Joshi, Anja Flottmeier and Laura Stipanovic, GEM Report Today, the global education community is at UNESCO’s headquarters to celebrate the International Day of Education and launch the 2026 Youth Report, Lead with youth. This year’s Education Day theme highlights youth as agents of change in advancing inclusive, quality education and building just, peaceful, […] The post It’s time to Lead with youth! appeared first on World Education Blog.
By Priyadarshani Joshi, Anja Flottmeier and Laura Stipanovic, GEM Report
Today, the global education community is at UNESCO’s headquarters to celebrate the International Day of Education and launch the 2026 Youth Report, Lead with youth. This year’s Education Day theme highlights youth as agents of change in advancing inclusive, quality education and building just, peaceful, and inclusive societies. There could not be a more fitting moment to launch a report that puts youth and student voices at the center of education decision making.
Produced in partnership with the United Nations Youth Office, this report attempts to understand the leading role of youth and students in education around the world and presents the first attempt to measure their participation in education decision making globally. It includes a series of recommendations developed with young people and aimed at creating enabling environments to improve meaningful youth participation in education.
The 2026 Youth Report plays a dual role. It concludes the 2024/5 GEM Report cycle on leadership by highlighting the critical role of youth and student leaders, while also launching the new GEM Report Countdown to 2030 series that will examine the lessons learned and the implications for the shape of education beyond the SDG 4 framework.
By mapping the different ways governments approach youth and student participation, the report seeks to also equip young people to engage with, share, and challenge its findings. It makes a clear case for embedding youth and student voices as the world enters the final stretch of SDG 4 and begins shaping a new global education agenda: one designed not for young people, but together with them.
Education systems are strongest when youth and students shape them
Young people’s visible leadership has grown dramatically since the 1995 World Programme of Action for Youth. They are widely recognized for pushing accountability and social justice, and for driving action on climate change, peace and security, inequality, and political reform. In many contexts, they serve as essential agents of positive change.
Education is fundamentally about young people and students. It seems only natural that they should help shape the decisions that affect their learning and their futures. Youth and students already take on leadership roles in schools and universities, civil society organizations, youth and student movements, and in politics. They are advocates for inclusive, equitable quality education – for their own futures, and for the well-being of their communities and countries.
Yet government and youth perspectives give us a more uneven picture of whether education decision making is happening with youth. Of the 93 governments who responded to our survey, a representative global sample, one in three reported having a formal requirement to engage with youth or students. Another third reported the existence of some mechanisms. Three in four countries have consulted with young people on education legislation and policy. However, it is quite difficult for most countries to parse out the specific impacts of youth and student interventions on education laws and policies. Of the 101 responding youth and student organizations, most expressed strong aims to influence education policies and represent youth and students. But they also reported that their voice, visibility and impact are limited and that their role does not continue through to policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
The encouraging news is that engagement with young people is clearly of interest, and positive efforts are growing. While formal mechanisms and more advanced youth engagement processes are often found in wealthier countries, many countries are developing more ambitious youth policies and approaches to engage youth and students on policy issues such as curriculum development, inclusion and well-being, mental health and school safety.
When young people lead with other education decision makers, the potential of co-owned, relevant, high quality education systems built on intergenerational trust and respect can be realized. Enabling youth and student leadership in education will require the ownership of this objective by youth, students, governments and all organizations active in advocating for youth and student presence and visibility.
Meaningful youth engagement in education remains an aspirational role
Youth and student leadership is needed in education, yet youth and students are typically not viewed as sharing leadership responsibilities with adults. The tasks ahead include truly embedding such representation in national processes; using relevant perspectives to improve laws and policies; building the political will to invest in enabling environments; offering adequate financial and institutional support; and convincing those in power to engage in intergenerational dialogue and take youth and student proposals into account.
Governments that are genuinely interested in the contribution of youth and students in decision making in education need to work in the following directions:
- Establish formal mechanisms, in legislation or regulations, that require youth and student participation in decisions on new education legislation or policy.
- Ensure that processes inviting youth and students to participate in education decision making are meaningful and aligned with principles, such as those in the Pact for the Future, that guarantee accessible, inclusive, and representative participation; adequate time, capacity-building and resources; clear roles and objectives; safe and voluntary engagement; and transparent communication on how inputs have informed decisions.
- Engage youth and student organizations not only in the design but also in the implementation of education legislation and policy, including but not limited to monitoring, to build more trust and ownership of these decisions.
- Support youth and student engagement by dedicating sufficient time to civic skills in the curriculum as well as by allocating resources to develop the capacity of youth and student organizations to become active citizens, to engage meaningfully in decision-making processes in education and to overcome barriers to take up formal roles within governments.
A call to strengthen meaningful youth engagement in education
This report is the result of a partnership between the GEM Report team and the UN Youth Office. All governments were approached to provide feedback on how they engage with youth in education decision making. Nearly 500 nationally representative youth and student organizations were mapped and about 400 of them contacted. Youth and student organizations were involved in all the stages of the process, from the development of the surveys to the creation of illustrations and advocacy materials. This report would not have been possible without their support!
- Read the report
- Download the illustration on meaningful youth engagement and use your creativity to express youth voices, ideas and aspirations through colour
- Consult the global mapping of youth and student organizations
- Share the social media resources
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