Various chapters in this volume describe efforts on behalf of governments, civil society, and researchers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to ensure that children gain the social and emotional skills and competencies that enable them to thrive personally and professionally while promoting collective peace and prosperity. We cannot, however, most effectively design and target such efforts-or know the extent to which we are succeeding (or not) in such efforts-without tools that provide information about the nature and extent of children's social and emotional skills, how such skills change over time, and the aspects of children's school, family, and community environments that promote or impede the development of such skills. In this chapter, we introduce a “Measurement for What?” framework to guide emerging efforts to develop and adapt measurement tools to assess and promote children’s holistic learning and development in the MENA region. This includes assessments of social and emotional skills, as well as the quality of programmes intended to promote such outcomes. We illustrate the utility of the framework using examples from the Education in Emergencies: Evidence for Action (3EA) Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT) Measurement Consortium.

The EQUAL (Education Quality and Learning for All) Network for Sustainable Development Goal 4 aims to identify and develop research networks, provide seed grants and increase research-practice partnerships in two regions of the world affected by the learning crisis – the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). EQUAL is capacity building of networks of scholars so that the evidence bases in measurement and evaluation relevant to the lifelong learning goal of the SDGs is advanced at the country level and across countries within the two regions.