The challenges and the reforms of the education sector | Experts’ Opinions

How can we prepare younger generations for a future that is changing with the speed of light? Should good grades still be the goal or perhaps the education sector should focus on building life skills at school instead? In a world currently on the wave of omnipresent artificial intelligence, challenging job markets, and changing career trends, education appears to be at a turning point. While modern schools try to adapt programs and curricula to fit the current times, globally, around 272 million children and youth remain out of school. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the problems and solutions that modern education faces with opinions from DevelopmentAid experts on the occasion of the 2026 International Day of Education.

DevelopmentAid: What will be the most significant challenges in the education sector in 2026, and how can these be addressed?

“Education systems in 2026 are operating under permanent strain. Governance pressures, climate shocks, conflict, displacement, demographic shifts, changing student–teacher roles, administrative overload, and persistent fiscal constraints are no longer episodic disruptions; they are the operating environment. The central challenge is no longer expansion, but endurance — how to preserve learning, equity, and system integrity amid continuous shocks. The first necessary shift is from reaction to strategy. Many systems remain overextended, pursuing broad reform agendas without the capacity or financing to sustain these. In constrained contexts, priorities must narrow and be sequenced to what is non-negotiable: foundational literacy and numeracy, safe and continuous schooling, and credible pathways for student progression. This requires difficult trade-offs, including reducing low-impact, high-cost initiatives in favor of instructional time, essential learning materials, and teacher support. Equally important is institutional accountability. Policies, budgets, and delivery mechanisms must be aligned, with clear responsibility for outcomes and the consequences of chronic non-delivery. Education systems must move from project-driven activity to operational resilience, guided by minimum service standards that define what every child is entitled to receive, even during disruption. In an era of permanent crisis, education systems will succeed not by doing more, but by doing less — deliberately, coherently, and with discipline.”

“In 2026, the biggest challenge in education is no longer pupils’ enrolment – it is the process of learning itself. The World Bank estimates that about 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text, and that deficit compounds across the life course. A second constraint is the chronic lack of teachers: UNESCO estimates that the world will need roughly 44 million additional primary and secondary school teachers by 2030, while many systems are already struggling with uneven deployment, weak support, and high attrition among personnel. A third challenge is the disruption caused by conflict, displacement, and climate shocks that repeatedly interrupt the learning process. Addressing this requires a focused recovery package with clear priorities: protect early grade learning time, expand structured pedagogy and remediation, and invest in ongoing teacher training and strong school leadership, instead of one-off workshops. This should be paired with crisis-ready delivery models, including safe schools, continuity plans, and low-tech options, and with transparent learning data so that politics cannot hide failure.”

“In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the education sector remains incoherent, inflexible, and politically colored, operating within a system of limited resources and outdated curricula. The system is deeply divided and influenced by nationalist tendencies, often stuck in the residues of the war in the region. It is arguably designed to fuel intolerance and fear of others, permanently invoking memories of conflict and suffering. This structural violence impedes people from reaching their full potential. Specifically, the phenomenon of “two schools under one roof” persists, where children from different ethnic groups (Bosniaks and Croats) attend classes in the same building but are physically separated and taught separate curricula. Addressing this requires opposing all forms of violence, including structural violence. Furthermore, mental health issues among youth have worsened post-COVID-19, with anxiety and depression rates reaching 28-34%, yet there is a lack of structured crisis response mechanisms in schools. Solutions must focus on conflict transformation where youth are treated as stakeholders contributing to peacebuilding, rather than merely victims or beneficiaries.”

DevelopmentAid: How should the education sector evolve in 2026 to remain effective amid shrinking budgets and growing global crises?

“In 2026, education systems need to operate more like essential services: resilient, prioritized, and measurable. With budgets tightening, the sector should stop spreading money across dozens of pilots and instead fund a small set of scalable, evidence-based measures such as early grade reading and numeracy, targeted catch-up, and teacher training that is linked to simple assessments. UNICEF warns that international aid for education is projected to fall by about US$3.2 billion by the end of 2026, a drop of roughly 24% compared to 2023, which makes disciplined choices unavoidable. This means national delivery plans that align domestic budgets and external support behind a single results framework, along with serious efficiency work to reduce low-impact spending, streamline procurement, and cut administrative duplication across projects. In crisis-affected contexts, education needs to be integrated with social and child protection so that the poorest families can keep children in school when shocks occur.”

“There can be no transformation of the education sector without a transformation of the political elites and their awareness of the importance of the educational system. This evolution must shift from a system that serves the authorities to one that focuses on the well-being, progress, and welfare of young people. Current decision-making in high schools remains unilateral and dominated by school authorities, with minimal student participation. Political elites often resist change because they do not want youth who think critically and initiate change; such youth will pose a threat to established power structures, corruption, and the desire for indefinite rule. To remain effective, the sector must implement models like the co-management approach inspired by the Council of Europe, which fosters collaboration between students, teachers, and administrators. This includes creating standardized policies for mental health interventions, which are currently lacking in secondary schools, and ensuring that youth engagement is meaningful rather than symbolic.”

DevelopmentAid: Are current education aid models truly reaching the most marginalized learners, or reinforcing existing inequalities?

“We invest superhuman efforts to ensure our models reach marginalized groups and reduce inequality, even if the impact is minimal. In the struggle against ossified bureaucracy, our guiding idea is that even the longest journey begins with a small first step. Our work is built upon the belief that all children should enjoy their rights irrespective of their national, ethnic, or social origin. Data from our interventions indicates progress in reaching these populations. For the UPSHIFT workshops, 65.54% of applications came from rural areas, compared to 34.45% from urban centers. Furthermore, in our “Youth for the Clean Air” project, one in two participants declared themselves to be from minority or disadvantaged groups. Through the Program of Secondary Prevention, we identified 2.5% of children at risk and integrated prevention programs into the annual work plans of 58 schools in the Una-Sana and Canton 10 regions. These metrics demonstrate that targeted aid models can effectively reach marginalized learners if implemented with persistence.”

“Many education aid models still fail to reach learners from marginalized groups. When success is counted in activities delivered, programs tend to concentrate where delivery is easiest, for example in more stable areas, among children who are already enrolled, and in areas with stronger institutions. This can reinforce inequality by improving mainstream systems while leaving displaced learners, girls facing social barriers, children with disabilities, and linguistic minorities with learner services. The looming contraction in official development assistance for education makes this even more dangerous, with UNICEF estimating that cuts could push millions more children out of school by the end of 2026. Fixing the model is not a mystery: ring fence funding for the hardest to reach, publish equity results that show who benefited by district and group, and finance schools per learner with additional weighting for the disadvantaged. More decisions should move to local schools and communities, but this must be matched with safeguards, independent monitoring, and predictable multi-year funding so that inclusion is sustained rather than short-term.”

“On equality, I believe we should look to models operating in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, where education is truly inclusive. There shouldn’t be schools that charge exorbitant fees for quality education while others offer little to no resources. Governments must step in – whether through funding, scholarships, or policies that ensure every student has equal access to high-quality education. If that means private schools admitting a percentage of students on scholarships or public schools raising standards, so be it. Education should never be a privilege; it should be a right.”

DevelopmentAid: Is the global education sector ready to regulate AI use in classrooms, or is it already lagging behind reality?

“In my opinion, the global education sector is already lagging behind reality. Students are using artificial intelligence daily, while many education systems remain cautious, fragmented, or underprepared in this regard. In many contexts, teachers express apprehension toward AI, not because of resistance to innovation, but due to limited guidance, weak policy frameworks, and insufficient institutional support. Effective regulation cannot begin with restriction alone; it must begin with clarity of purpose. Education systems need to define why AI is being introduced, how it is intended to support learning, to what effect, and whose priorities it serves. Without this foundation, regulatory efforts risk being reactive, uneven, and disconnected from classroom realities. AI should not be framed as a threat to teaching. When responsibly governed, it can support differentiated instruction, formative feedback, hands-on learning, and instructional planning. However, teachers require structured capacity-building and practical AI literacy, rather than being left to navigate complex tools independently. This clarity is essential if AI policy is to translate into consistent classroom practice rather than uneven experimentation. For development partners, the priority in 2026 is credible governance: clear accountability frameworks, safeguards for data protection and assessment integrity, procurement standards, and deliberate equity considerations. Until institutional capacity catches up with classroom use, policy will continue to trail practice — with uneven and avoidable consequences.”

“In 2026, the global education sector faces a significant lag in regulating artificial intelligence due to the rapid pace of technological advancement outstripping policy development. Obviously, there are five (5) primary reasons for this regulatory gap. Firstly, the unprecedented speed of innovation and rapid adoption has gone way beyond, while policy lags behind. Student usage of AI has surged globally, with nearly 92% of undergraduates using AI by 2025, while only 19% of institutions had formal AI policies by early 2026. Also, AI tools evolve at a “lightning speed” that traditional educational policy-making—notoriously slow and deliberative—cannot match. The second reason for the lag in regulating AI is the widening “AI Divide” basically due to infrastructure gaps and two-tiered systems infrastructure. Regulation assumes a level of access that does not exist globally. In early 2026, school internet access remains as low as 40% in Africa and 14% in rural areas of least developed countries. A divide has emerged between wealthy schools with advanced cloud infrastructure and underfunded institutions that lack the budget for AI-ready systems or the technical expertise to regulate them. The third reason for the lag in regulating AI is to do with training and expertise deficit. Educator unpreparedness in the sense that less than half of teachers (48%) have received professional development or training on AI. Fourthly, fragmented legal and ethical frameworks do contribute to the lag in regulating AI. Global governance is inconsistent, with a “patchwork” of regional approaches. While the EU AI Act reaches full enforcement in August 2026, many other regions lack comprehensive federal frameworks, forcing institutions to self-govern. The fifth and final reason for the lag in regulating AI is the shift in educational reality. Existing curricula still focus on traditional tasks like short-term recall, which AI can now perform, while failing to regulate for the new “reality” where AI literacy is a core requirement for future employment.”

“Artificial intelligence, as a product of the human mind, can be utilized as a facilitator, aid, source of inspiration, and a shortcut to information. However, this is only viable if it does not turn into its opposite, serving as something that stifles creativity, halts the thought process, suppresses inspiration, and deprives young people of imagination, emotional edge, and motivation. Our organization’s mission emphasizes the development of individuals who are capable of thinking critically and acting creatively. Technology must support, not replace, these human capacities. For example, our Media Labyrinth project educates youth on recognizing information and learning self-criticism to combat false information and hate speech. Similarly, projects addressing cyber violence focus on defense and reporting mechanisms. The regulation of AI must align with these educational goals, ensuring it enhances rather than diminishes the capacity for critical thinking and civic responsibility.”

“This technology risks widening gaps for populations without access to quality education, not just in remote areas but even in places like Mexico City, where educational challenges have persisted for decades. The misuse of AI – whether to create generic CVs or job applications – can lead to missed opportunities and reinforce inequalities. So, what’s the solution? For me, we need to go back to basics. Students should rediscover the value of real research – reading books, visiting libraries, and learning how to find credible sources on their own. Since the internet arrived, everything has become too easy, and now with AI, it’s even more tempting to skip critical thinking. Asking ChatGPT for five recent articles might save time, but it doesn’t teach the skills needed to analyze, question, and learn deeply.”

DevelopmentAid: Which realistic reforms could transform education systems in aid-dependent countries within the next decade?

“A bold but realistic reform is a shift from project delivery to shared accountability for institutional performance that is anchored firmly in national education systems. Development partners, consultants, and governments have long worked – often in good faith – to strengthen systems rather than bypass them. Yet outcomes frequently fall short once funding enters complex institutional and political environments. Education reform must have its origin in a clear understanding of how systems actually function with limited human resources, overlapping mandates, political pressures, and the daily realities faced by administrators, teachers, and schools. A reform that overlooks these conditions will not endure. A viable path forward is to align financing, policy, and technical support around a small number of clearly defined system outcomes such as learning continuity, teacher deployment, or foundational learning recovery while allowing flexibility in how countries achieve these. Accountability must be practical and proportionate, with transparent reporting, routine course correction, and sustained support embedded within ministries rather than alongside them. Transformation will not come from new frameworks, but from better alignment between intent and execution. The future of education reform lies in bridging global agendas and ground-level realities, ensuring institutions are supported — and expected — to deliver results that endure.”

“A bold but realistic reform is to introduce a national “learning guarantee” and organize the system around it. Firstly, finance would follow pupils using equity weights, so that poverty, disability, displacement, and remoteness automatically trigger additional resources for the schools that serve them. Secondly, teaching would be professionalized through a career ladder linked to coaching and classroom practice, rather than paperwork and seniority, allowing systems to recruit, retain, and improve teachers at scale. Thirdly, foundational learning would be measured independently using simple, low-cost assessments, and the results would be made public and used to support low-performing schools, not punish them. Together, this creates a performance and equity compact in which money follows need, teaching improves continually, and learning is visible. In aid-dependent countries, donors can support the learning guarantee through multi-year pooled financing tied to these reforms, reducing fragmentation and shifting the conversation from projects to system performance.”

“A radical and deep reform of education is necessary, involving the engagement of experts, the academic community, parents, and all societal factors. Stakeholders must become aware that quality education that rests on the universal principles of science, justice, morality, humanity, peace, creativity, freedom, and equality is the only guarantee of a future and a happy society. This reform must move beyond unilateral decision-making and establish sustainable, systemic models for democratic participation. For instance, the Co-Managed High Schools Project pilots a model that enables structured, meaningful student participation in decision-making across five countries. Additionally, reforms must address the specific demographic realities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the population consists primarily of Bosniaks (50.11%), Serbs (30.78%), and Croats (15.43%), by promoting cohesion rather than division. We must continue to work toward an open society that embraces cultural heritage and diversity based on the rule of law and transparency.”

See also: World Human Rights Day 2025: Ongoing battle or everyday essential? | Experts’ Opinions

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