UNESCO Institute for Statistics

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Mission Statement

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics is the statistical branch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It was established in July 1999 in order to reform UNESCO's statistical capacities.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) was established in July 1999 to meet the growing needs of UNESCO Member States and the international community for a wider range of policy-relevant, timely, and reliable statistics in the fields of education, science and technology, culture and communication.

The Institute's functional autonomy, together with the maintenance of high professional standards and intellectual independence, enables it to respond effectively to these needs.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics is hosted by the University of Montreal in Canada.

What are the Institute's objectives?

The Institute aims to:

gather a wide range of quality statistical information to help United Nations Member States analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of their programs and to inform their policy decisions;

interpret and report on the global situation with regard to education, science and technology, culture and communication.

What does the Institute do?

The Institute's activities involve:

collecting up-to-date statistics from across the world according to agreed quality procedures and disseminating them to the users in a form appropriate to their needs;

developing the conceptual and methodological framework for the collection of internationally comparable data and indicators;

working with Member States to improve their capacities to collect and analyze data of relevance to their policy initiatives; and

analyzing data in partnership with policy makers and researchers, and promoting wider and more informed use of data for policy purposes.

The UIS is a crucial link in an international network of experts and institutions dealing with statistics within UNESCO's fields of competence.

The Institute's current work program

consulting the international community in order to determine the long-term data needs of UN Member States, regional and international organizations;

carrying out fundamental reviews of work in the areas of science and technology, culture and communication in order to prepare a future strategy;

conducting annual education surveys, in order to obtain a core set of quality education data, supported by training workshops held in all regions of the world;

working with Member States to implement the ISCED97 (the revised International Standard Classification of Education) within their country;

developing the program on World Education Indicators (WEI) in co-ordination with the OECD as well as the program for European Union candidate countries in cooperation with EUROSTAT;

supporting statistical capacity-building within countries, including the Africa-wide Strengthening National Education Statistical Information Systems (NESIS) program; and