THREE-YEAR PLAN, 2006-2009

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The Commonwealth of Learning has conducted the most comprehensive planning exercise in its history in developing this plan for 2006-2009. It consulted extensively with stakeholders across the Commonwealth, commissioned environmental scans from all regions and contracted an external evaluation of its work.

These inputs indicated that COL should now:

• continue to focus on the global development agenda and "south-south"
  cooperation, taking a long-term view;
• pursue fewer activities but for longer periods and improve the monitoring
  and evaluation of its work;
• intensify its links with governments and strengthen partnerships with
  multilateral bodies;
• maintain a balance between policy advice and implementation;
• foster the responsible autonomy of staff but strengthen teamwork; and
• maintain intellectual and technical leadership and sharpen its brand image.

COL's Board of Governors has responded to these imperatives with this plan. This statement of COL's strategy will be the basis for discussions with individual Commonwealth governments prior to the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, 11-14 December 2006. Those discussions will complete this high-level plan with a set of country action proposals linking COL's overall strategy to each nation's priorities in an operational manner. At the conference, COL will request pledges of financial support from each government in order to carry out this work over the next three years.

The plan is entitled Learning for Development. COL starts from Amartya Sen's portrayal of development as freedom, expressed concretely in the widely agreed agenda for bettering the human condition that includes the UN's Millennium Development Goals, the Goals of Education for All (Dakar) and the Commonwealth objectives of peace, democracy, equality and good  governance. Expanding human learning is essential to the achievement of every element in this agenda and knowledge is the royal road to freedom. Conventional teaching methods cannot cope with the scale of the challenge, but technology – old and new – harnessed to aid learning and share knowledge can.

COL achieves impact by promoting powerful models for applying technology to learning for various purposes. It has helped countries create wider access to schooling, improve the health of their citizens, increase farmers' incomes, and link learning to better livelihoods. Continuing analysis and refinement of these models ensure that they can be transferred intelligently from one country to another.

Although it is a tiny intergovernmental body, not a donor agency, COL has helped Commonwealth countries give millions of people new opportunities to learn over the two decades of its existence. The secret of its success is to empower governments, institutions and individuals to develop learning systems themselves without always relying on donors. This plan extends that process of empowerment.

From the Introduction to COL's Three-year Plan, 2006-2009,
Sir John Daniel
President and CEO
Commonwealth of Learning