Development of the Regional Education System in the Context of Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges, Priorities and Prospects

The article analyses the development of the regional education system in the light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and, above all, Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive and equitable quality education. The evolution of international ideas of education for sustainable development is traced from the Talloires Declaration to the UNESCO framework for the period up to 2030. It is shown that the UN shift to a regional principle of achieving the goals transfers a substantial part of responsibility to the territorial level. Using statistics on the digital inequality of Russian regions for 2010–2018 and an integral rating of regions by the level of higher education development, the study identifies overlaps and divergences between digital accessibility and the state of educational systems. Priorities of regional education policy are substantiated, and the limitations of the data are discussed.