The two agendas that have marked the expansion of educational systems continue to set the rules of the game today: equality – in rights and opportunities – and distinction – in results and status. Although they may be complementary, they are colliding like never before due to the economic, technological and social changes of our time.

The great project of universal education for all formulated 250 years ago, during the Enlightenment, has seen extraordinary advances, especially in the 20th century, and has suffered important defeats so far in the 21st century. Today we know that schooling and learning do not go hand in hand, and we are facing a learning crisis in which more than half of the children on the planet are not able to understand a simple text at the age of ten. Added to this alarming inequality are the effects of the Great Recession on education investment, the pandemic and the resulting closure of schools in almost all countries in the world for months (or even years), the global democratic recession and the proliferation of violent conflicts, all with a devastating effect on the education and learning opportunities of millions of people.

The success of this project, and its globalization until it became an agenda and software shared by all the countries of the world, have brought us to the current situation, which can be seen as an existential and end-of-cycle crisis or rather as one of growth, which leads us to wonder: will the project of universal education survive? Against the idea that we are facing a massive failure, this book provides data, travels through countries and proposes ways that illuminate a new stage of progress for the most successful project in history.