Qatar Foundation and SUMMA launch new global education index WISE

During the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) held in Doha, SUMMA and the Qatar Foundation officially launched the WISE Education Index, an innovative framework that seeks to redefine how the effectiveness of education systems around the world is assessed. The launch took place at a high-level consultation workshop, led by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Vice Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of the Qatar Foundation, and attended by prominent international authorities and specialists, including the Minister of Education, representatives from the World Bank, Brookings Institution, MIT, Pratham Education Foundation, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee, among others.

The new index addresses a long-standing gap: although education systems are undergoing profound transformations—demographic changes, technological advances, and new economic demands—existing global indicators remain insufficient to capture the entire education cycle, from conditions for early learning to processes that affect well-being, job readiness, and lifelong learning.

“This collaboration between SUMMA and the Catar Foundation lays the groundwork for understanding how education systems improve and innovate, in order to drive profound change in Latin America and the world. We hope to begin working together in 2026.” – Javier González, Director of SUMMA.

Unlike traditional metrics focused on static results and strongly associated with national wealth, the WISE Education Index proposes a holistic, process-oriented approach capable of explaining not only what education systems achieve, but also how they progress and transform over time.

In this context, SUMMA was selected as the project’s global research and statistics partner following a rigorous international evaluation process that included representatives from institutions such as Stanford University and MIT. This recognition positions SUMMA as a key player in the development of the new global standard for educational measurement.

Javier González, director of SUMMA, emphasised the impact of this collaboration and noted that it will continue to consolidate SUMMA’s work, which has already been ongoing for 10 years in Latin America and the Caribbean. “This collaboration between SUMMA and the Qatar Foundation lays the foundation for understanding how education systems improve and innovate, in order to drive profound changes in Latin America and the world. We hope to begin working together in 2026,” explained González.

During the workshop, specialists from different countries provided recommendations to strengthen the conceptual framework of the Index, a fundamental input for the pilot phase to be developed between 2026 and 2027. This study—which will combine primary and secondary data from a diverse sample of countries—will lay the foundations for the first edition of the WISE Education Index, scheduled for 2027.

This project seeks to advance toward more equitable, informed policies geared toward human flourishing, social integration, and innovation capacity.