Sustainable Development Goal in Education: History of Creation, Issues of Implementation and Russian Case

The Sustainable Development Goals (hereinafter referred to as the SDGs), recommended by the UN in 2015, are the cornerstone project within the international development policy until 2030. The SDGs are instruments for international cooperation and the development of joint national policies in various fields, including education. This article aims to analyze the process of formulation of education place in a more global concept of sustain[1]able development, to study the main problems of the national implementation of the SDGs in the field of education, as well as to provide a brief analysis of the synergy between national goals and objectives of Russia’s development in the field of education with the SDGs. The literature sources being analyzed, the process of conceptualization of educational policy in sustainable development is demonstrated as a field of struggle between competing views of the international organizations, that turned out to be the main actors in the formulation of international educational policy. These disputes, coupled with the limited ability of developing countries to achieve the SDGs, have led to systemic problems in the subsequent implementation of the SDGs in the field of education. The presence of these problems, expressed in the literature, is confirmed by the analysis of the synergies of the development goals of the Russian national educational policy with the SDGs. At the same time, the indifference towards the SDGs in the field of education is also revealed on the part of the actors formulating and implementing the state educational policy, which manifests itself in ignoring a certain number of tasks within the SDGs. These aspects raise the question of real applicability of international goal-setting mechanisms within the framework of the SDGs in the field of education and the real feasibility.