17CCEM Stakeholders' Forum 2009


The 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (17CCEM) will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 15 - 19 June 2009, and marks 50 years since the first such conference was held in the United Kingdom in 1959. Commonwealth education ministers meet every three years to discuss issues of mutual concern and interest. The 2009 meeting will build on the agreements and decisions taken at the previous gathering from 11 - 14 December 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as focus on the chosen theme "Education in the Commonwealth: towards and beyond global goals and targets".

17CCEM will feature a Stakeholders' Forum (for civil society, academia and the private sector), a Youth Forum, a Teachers' Forum, and for the first time a University Vice-Chancellors' Forum, each of which will present a statement to Education Ministers on the outcomes of their discussions. 17CCEM will also see the culmination of the second round of the Education Good Practice Awards, which was launched on 30 April at the Commonwealth Secretariat and open for submissions until 31 October 2008. The awards recognise good practice in six action areas identified by ministers at the 15CCEM held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2003.

The Commonwealth Foundation is assisting the Government of Malaysia in the process of civil society engagement with 17CCEM, including convening the Stakeholders' Forum, the largest of the parallel events, on 14 - 15 June 2009. As part of the consultation, in February 2008 the Foundation held a meeting with UK-based Commonwealth education networks and a delegation from the Government of Malaysia. This meeting agreed on the importance of making connections and building partnerships across a number of sectors as an overriding theme of the Forum.

The preliminary meetings also emphasised the need to work towards promoting understanding between Commonwealth citizens in areas such as student mobility and exchange programmes. There was consensus on a commitment to promote diversity, respect and understanding and finding ways to take this forward.

To develop the themes and sub-themes of the Stakeholders Forum, and ensure that civil society is able to shape the Forum, the Commonwealth Foundation will hold two civil society consultations - an e-consultation, to be taking place via this website and a national consultation in Malaysia in late May 2008.

Please read the background paper to the e-consultation and then contribute to any or all of the four topics.

  • STAKEHOLDERS' FORUM DISCUSSION TOPICS

    The over-arching theme of 17CCEM will address making connections that look “towards and beyond global goals and targets.” 

    Issues that could be tackled by the Stakeholders’ Forum, emerging from consultations to date, include the following: 

    1. Partnerships and connections, including new ways of working collaboratively with different Commonwealth partners.
    2. Issues around the individual citizen: lifelong learning; disrupted education and the resumption of education; vocational education; literacy. 
    3. Institutional issues: addressing education at different layers (primary, secondary, tertiary) and particularly making better connections between them; non-formal education; and the role of universities and similar institutions as responsible corporate entities.
    4. Community issues: responses to the Commonwealth’s respect and understanding agenda ; issues of student mobility; diversity; vocational education, playing an active role in building democracy and development.

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    • Promising approaches for accelerating the attainment of Commonwealth values and priorities through education

      • How can education contribute to creating a culture of peace, tolerance, respect and understanding?

      Many countries in the Commonwealth - young and not so young, large and small, developed and developing – have successfully followed different courses for attaining their education goals. The 50th anniversary of the Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers is a suitable occasion to highlight some of the most promising approaches that have potential for adaptation and replication in different contexts. The exchange of ideas and models could play a role in accelerating the pace of educational development in many member states and could take place via school and college linking and scholarship programmes within the Commonwealth. 

      This theme could include a response to the Commonwealth’s ‘Respect and Understanding’ mandate. It could draw from key recent pieces of work such as: the Commonwealth Foundation’s 2007 report on inter-religious understanding, Engaging With Faith, which inter alia discusses girls’ education in a religious context: the Munyonyo Statement on Respect and Understanding, issued by Commonwealth Heads of Government in Kampala Uganda, in November 2007; and the 2007 report of the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding, Civil Paths to Peace. Potential areas for focus here include the role of faith-based schools, the content and quality of education and whether education genuinely leads to broader understanding, empowerment and social change (see Annex 3). 

      Successful models for replication are offered by the Education Good Practice Awards Administered by the Commonwealth Secretariat, the awards recognise good practice in the Six Action Areas identified by Ministers at the 15CCEM held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2003. The second round of Education Good Practice Awards was launched on 30 April 2008 at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

    • Challenges of post-primary education

      • How can education institutions beyond the primary level play a part in supporting Education For All (EFA) agenda and carry forward the wider socio-economic transformation agenda? 

      It is now increasingly recognised that different sub-sectors of education (primary, secondary and tertiary) are critically linked to each other and need to be seen as a continuum. The development of one sub-sector depends on the development of the other. For instance, a country striving to achieve universal primary education cannot do so until it has a sufficient number of teachers and other education professionals who have completed the desired level of secondary and tertiary education. The relationship between different sub-sectors is organic and one of interdependence.

      National development depends on the overall development of the education system. Secondary education caters to a critical age group for skill development, identity formation and reaffirming the information and knowledge base. The spread of tertiary education is important for a nation to have an edge in creative thinking, competitiveness and leadership – aspects that are crucial for the development of a knowledge society and a creative economy.  Therefore, there is an urgent need to move away from a focus on primary education alone to discuss the challenges faced by all levels, especially in the context of globalisation and the competitive world. 

    • Emerging challenges in a fast-changing world: the role of education

      • How can the Commonwealth adopt a holistic approach to education development?

      Modern development challenges are complex and multifaceted, involving climate change, rapid urbanisation, globalised markets, increasing incidence of HIV and AIDS, rising social and economic inequalities, emergence of multicultural societies and  economic challenges such as fluctuating commodity prices.  Education is often central to meeting these challenges. 

      It is a fundamental role of education to prepare students to address the challenges that their societies and economies are facing or likely to face. This poses a challenge to education systems in more than one way. The role of and expectations from teachers are undergoing a sea change in view of these newer challenges. For instance, teachers are increasingly being required to protect themselves from HIV, deal with the situation arising out of teacher absenteeism and shortages arising due to the incidence of HIV in schools, and act as care-givers as well as provide prevention education to students and communities. This has implications for teacher education, training and management. Similarly, other emerging challenges require other kinds of preparedness and modern education systems need to take note of these. In this context, it is important to ensure that education in the Commonwealth is geared to take on this challenge.  Some of the work on challenges facing member states is highlighted by Commonwealth Secretariat’s work in the background paper. 

    • Redefining equality and quality in education

      • How can new technologies, including information and communications technologies, as well as open learning, help promote gender equity, extend education opportunity, improve quality and develop skills? 

      Equality has often been defined narrowly in the context of education as parity of access between different gender, social and economic groups. Parity is a quantitative concept which does not go into a number of inequality issues that have bearing on education. For instance, there could be parity in the enrolment ratios of girls and boys while the classroom processes could still be reinforcing prevalent stereotypes, and therefore education would not really contribute to any change in gender relations and corresponding social change. There is an urgent need to move towards discussion on substantive equality in education between genders, or social and economic groups. This needs to include other issues affecting equality in education, such as the continuing exclusion of children with disabilities from mainstream education.

      Quality is often narrowly defined in terms of literacy, numeracy and learning achievement. The development of appropriate knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that promote capacities to make informed choices and contribute to social and economic development are not necessarily reflected in the learning outcomes approach. It is also important that the notion of equality is in-built in the definition of quality. Redefining quality is critical for making education play a more relevant and instrumental role in social and economic development of a country. Some organisations, such as Commonwealth of Learning are helping to improve equality and quality in education by focussing on quality assurance, teacher development, alternative forms of schooling, new approaches to higher education and the creation of expertise in e-learning.