November 1999

COL's Report to CHOGM and excerpts from the final CHOGM Communiqué Commonwealth Heads of Government Durban, November 1999
Leaders see COL as "ideal instrument" to meet their needs (News item in Connections, February 2000)

The biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) took place in Durban South Africa from 12 - 15 November 1999.

As Chairman of the Board, Dr. H. Ian Macdonald, lead COL's representation at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Durban, South Africa, from 12 - 15 November 1999. The Board of Governors  reported on COL's progress, highlighting its relevance to this year's CHOGM theme: Globalisation: The Commonwealth and People-Centred Development. Dr. Macdonald was joined by COL's President and C.E.O., Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan; COL's Director, Mr. Brian Long; and Board member Dr. Ihron Rensburg (Deputy Director-General, General and Further Education and Training, South Africa Department of Education).

The Executive Summary of the COL Report appears below.  Excerpts from the final Communiqué and Report of the Committee of the Whole also appear below.

Report to Commonwealth Heads of Government
from COL's Board of Governors
November 1999

Executive Summary

When Heads of Government created The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) at their meeting in Vancouver in 1987, they heralded a new phase in the Commonwealth's approach to human resource development, recognising the provision of education and training to all as key.

Against this background, COL was created in a bold, innovative and visionary move to stem the tide of ignorance and to build the foundations of educational opportunity designed to equip men and women with the training and skills to meet the needs of rapidly changing societies. COL's response to this challenge is set out in the accompanying description of its first ten years of existence.

This report seeks to capture the significance of COL on the eve of the new millennium. We see COL as an apt and agile agent of the Commonwealth. Not only is its focus on the determining characteristics of the day - knowledge and technology - but its attributes as an organisation epitomise those of bodies designed for the information and technological age. Modern, innovative organisations reserve for themselves the roles of strategists and designers, drawing on the vast productive and distributive capacities existing elsewhere to achieve their goals in the most effective, efficient and economical manner possible. COL possesses the talent and the knowledge, both of the challenges confronting the Commonwealth and the capacities available to meet them, to function in just such a fashion. Moreover, through such a modus operandi COL builds precisely the kinds of alliances and allegiances that help ensure its continued responsiveness to changing Commonwealth needs.

Leaders from all walks of life, the world over, recognise that all citizens must have access to education and training if they are to be equipped to shape their own destiny and meet the social, economic, and personal challenges of the global knowledge-based economy. To achieve this objective, governments will need to look beyond the conventional model for providing education. They will need to draw on the opportunities afforded by distance and open learning, which in turn must capitalise on the potential offered by the information and communications technologies. These instruments can economically extend access to quality education, even to the remotest regions. They also provide flexible learning options capable of addressing not only the formal educational needs but also the expanding needs for non-formal education in areas such as literacy, numeracy, public health and hygiene, as well as labour-market training and lifelong learning - not to mention special human challenges like refugee education.

Distance education and flexible and open learning, which focus on taking education and training to the learner at a time and place suitable to his or her needs, offer a more promising alternative route to the same end. Moreover, the rapid and dramatic improvements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) afford hitherto unavailable opportunities both for increasing access and improving quality. Unlike the conventional educational paradigm where investments in education infrastructure are almost exclusively useful only to education, in the distance education paradigm, investments in the complementary ICT infrastructure can provide a platform for the wider economy.

COL is located at the point of convergence between the demands of a global knowledge-based economy, the pertinence of open and distance learning, and the opportunities afforded by ICTs. The Board considers that COL's record of achievement is such that you, as leaders, can confidently reaffirm your faith in COL as an effective instrument of public policy by endorsing a more ambitious Three-year Plan, 2000-2003.

That Three-year Plan will be submitted to Commonwealth Education Ministers when they meet in Halifax, Canada, in November 2000. At that time we shall seek pledges sufficient to support a core budget of CDN$9 million. While significantly less than the CDN$20 million envisaged by Lord Briggs in his report leading to the establishment of COL, it would enable COL to fulfill in greater measure the mandate accorded it by Heads of Government. COL would thereby be positioned to play a pivotal role in human-centred development - the theme of this Meeting.

The Three-year Plan now in preparation envisages having COL focus on four roles:

• being a catalyst for collaborative action,
• being a capacity builder,
• being a Commonwealth resource for training, and
• being an information/knowledge provider.

Our report sketches the dimensions of these different roles, emphasising that they are interrelated and each must be informed by the rapid developments with respect to ICTs. As we indicate therein, we are also sensitive to issues of gender, good governance, human rights and civil society.

We are grateful to member governments for largely adhering to the pledges made during the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) in Botswana in 1997, and for approving the Three-year Plan, 1997-2000. We are especially appreciative of those governments, notably Britain and Canada, which have provided additional funds for special projects. Many governments and institutions also made contributions, direct and in kind, to specific projects in which they were directly engaged.

The creation of COL International, a not-for-profit corporation, gives us an instrument to bring the experience and expertise of COL to contract work funded by international financial institutions and development agencies. We hope to implement other revenue-generating activities designed to reinforce COL's capacity to address Commonwealth needs.

Recommendations

The Board of Governors therefore requests Commonwealth Heads of Government to:

1. Note The Commonwealth of Learning's progress and its contribution to pan-Commonwealth development in distance and open education, over the past decade, and

• Urge The Commonwealth of Learning to apply its knowledge as well as garner Commonwealth talent, skills and resources to broaden the application of open and distance education to promote lifelong learning covering all aspects of human, social, and economic development where training and knowledge are deemed critical.
• Reaffirm their expectation that The Commonwealth of Learning will use, and assist member countries to use, all existing and emerging technologies for the purpose of human development through Education and Training for All;
• Encourage The Commonwealth of Learning to develop partnerships and synergistic relationships with other national, regional and international agencies to pursue the full breadth of the goals and mission envisaged for COL and outlined in the Report.

2. Recommend strongly that their Ministers of Education provide The Commonwealth of Learning the necessary resources to implement its more ambitious Three-year Plan, 2000-2003.

3. Encourage all other Ministries and Ministers in other portfolios concerned with human development, to exploit The Commonwealth of Learning's capacities in the realisation of their objectives, furnishing the necessary resources to enable COL to provide such specifically identified services.

15 November 1999

CHOGM '99 in Durban, South Africa, has now concluded. Heads of Government recognised The Commonwealth of Learning in paragraph 56 of their final Communiqué (issued today):

Education: 56. Heads of Government reaffirmed their commitment to education and training as essential foundations of human development and emphasised their central importance in equipping people with the knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of development and to take advantage of the opportunities presented by globalisation. They recognised the contribution of the Commonwealth of Learning in supporting the efforts of Commonwealth developing countries to benefit fully from the new information and communication technologies in developing their human potential through distance education.

AND: Heads of Government also fully approved CHOGM's Report of the Committee of the Whole in their final Communiqué, wherein paragraphs 37 and 38 deal with COL:

Commonwealth of Learning:
37. The Committee received with satisfaction the Report of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and noted COL's success in fulfilling the objectives set out in its Three-year Plan, 1997-2000, approved by Ministers of Education at their meeting in Botswana and endorsed by Heads of Government during their Meeting in Edinburgh. The Committee appreciated that COL constitutes an ideal instrument through which the Commonwealth can extend access to education and training to meet its human resource development needs and to prepare Commonwealth citizens for the challenges of a global knowledge-based society. It encouraged COL to form partnerships as appropriate to enhance its capacity to pursue the full breadth of the goals and mission envisaged for COL in the Board's Report.

38. The Committee endorsed the direction sketched out for the next Three-year Plan, 2000-2003, given the critical importance of education and training to every aspect of human, social and economic development, as well as the opportunities presented by the new information and communication technologies. The Committee encouraged Commonwealth Ministers of Education to make pledges sufficient to provide COL with a minimum of $9 million annually to carry out this Plan.