The Commonwealth of Learning

It is a privilege for me to be present here and to participate in this Pan Commonwealth Forum on Empowerment Through Knowledge and Technology, on the occasion of the I0th Anniversary of The Commonwealth of Learning. I bring greetings from our Director-General, Mr. Federico Mayor, to the Government and People of Brunei Darussalam, and his congratulations to the Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, Board of Governors and all the staff of the Commonwealth of Learning on a proud decade of work. I also bring greetings from our Deputy Director-General, Mr. Colin Power, to the Commonwealth of Learning and to the participants of this Forum.

I gladly accepted the invitation to be a presenter because the theme "Open Schooling" focuses on a range of our most critical concerns, and this Forum holds promise of being a landmark in moving education development and technical co-operation towards responding to these concerns. The views I express are in my personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect those of UNESCO as an organisation.

Education for Tomorrow

When we speak of empowerment in human development, we may recall its essence as put in the 1995 Human Development Report:

"...a process of enlarging people's choices. These choices can be infinite and can change over time. But at all levels of development, the three essential ones are: for people to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge, and to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living."

Choice involves the use of knowledge or the ability to learn about them. There is no ambiguity therefore that the means to empowerment is education. Fifty years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserted that education is a basic human right. Today, we are saying it is the immediate pre-requisite for sustainable human development. At the advanced levels, education is the access to fulfilment. At the most basic levels it is the key to break the poverty trap.

One Universal Need: Many Dimensions

Today, education must be delivered immediately, wherever and however, to meet the needs at all levels. There are many critical dimensions and pressure points of development. There are needs pressure points and there are implementation pressure points. While we need to address the changing agenda for all, the requirements of the developing countries are overwhelming. To provide the needs context for my address I will first briefly highlight what I perceive are the over-riding needs dimensions, around which educational development must take place. Then, I shall deal with implementation, of which technical co-operation is itself a critical dimension.

Individualisation of Education

In advanced societies, the thrust in education is on empowerment through individualisation - for self-fulfilment, for exercise of civic responsibility, etc. In addition, for economic empowerment, there are the equally critical needs for optimum delivery and meeting individual requirements in technical and vocational and higher education, and lifelong learning. Therefore, the further development of the educational processes for individualisation is unquestionably the leading edge of the modern sector. Research and innovation on this front affect and produce spin-offs for all other areas of action.

Basic Education Needs

When, on the other hand, we speak of the less developed societies, educational development means above all access to basic education and equity. At the Jomtien Conference on Education for All in 1990, the nations of the world united in a call for a global effort and a grand alliance to ensure that

"...every person - child, youth and adult - shall he able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs."

The decade since has seen massive and extended efforts, and a plenitude of approaches and initiatives, to fulfill the call, notably the Joint Initiative on Distance Education (DE9) in 1993 launched by the nine most populous countries. There has been significant progress.

But the scale of those in poverty and without education today is still enormously forbidding. Some 150 million children aged 6-11 years are not in school, 60% of them girls, and the same number drop out from primary school within four years. Over 870 million adults are unable to read or write, and adult literacy remains below 40% in many countries. Meanwhile new forms of exclusions have been created, and the knowledge gaps have widened. Today 1.3 billion people still live on less than a US dollar a day.

This is the largest and socially most crucial dimension of need. At this level education cannot be separated from the development process, has to be community based and work with local resources, while drawing support from the nearest reachable conventional schools. The latter need must be expanded to form the eventual backbone system, but in intermediate situations, open schooling modalities must be fully exploited.

Secondary Education

Next, we need to address secondary education, increasingly the norm for effective living and lifelong education in a modernising environment. There were still 42 countries with gross enrolment rates of under 40% in 1995, of which 19 were under 20%.

Beyond numbers, secondary education is today caught in a maelstrom of escalating requirements. These pressures derive variously from the growing proportions of young persons completing primary education; its increasingly indispensability for them to function as persons, citizens, and members of modem democratic society; and its pre-requisite as preparation for work, skills training and further education. Secondary education must necessarily also vary from country to country, according to their social and economic development, social and cultural values, and objectives for nation building. Secondary education commands the critical years of a young person's development, and yet is strictly constrained by its time span.

Secondary education therefore is in need of massive attention, in three ways. Firstly, there is the problem of reaching the unreached. Secondly, there are complex requirements of content and direction, differentiation and individualisation. And thirdly, there is the need to strengthen its capacity to deliver and increase its cost-effectiveness. It is in mainstream secondary education that the parallel aims of individualising the educational process and extending the educational reach meet.

Technical & Vocational Education .

Lastly, there is technical and vocational education, or TVE. Besides massive expansion at all levels, it is in need of fundamental re-conceptualisation and transformation, to meet the exploding needs for preparation for the world of work, pre-employment training, occupational training, on-the-job training, and lifelong education and training, not to mention coping with technological change, guidance and individualisation. There is need also to provide skills development among the out-of school, the urban unemployed, as well as in the basic communities, to throw them a lifeline out of the poverty trap. The creation of skills is an educational dimension critical for economic development.

I shall not deal with higher education, as it is outside the scope of Open Schooling. But obviously, this is yet another critical dimension of education.

Promise of Technology: Open I,earning

We have come far with conventional schooling, based on the teacher with supporting textbooks. But the demands on the conventional system are straining its functional limits. Expanding more of the same will not solve the problem. At the same time, the costs of developing and maintaining the school system are prohibitive, especially in remote areas. These considerations place highest priority on finding efficient and more cost-effective approaches to schooling.

The same technological developments that have accentuated the demand for education also offer promise of new solutions. Out of these, the great new educational paradigm has emerged. Technology can now extend education beyond the school, both individually and on a mass basis - just as once the printed word and then the mail extended education beyond the teacher. In fact, in matured systems, education offerings have already evolved into menus of self-learning packages and multi-delivery learning frameworks. We now have exciting alternatives of single modes, dual modes and mixed modes of education.

The mechanisms of delivery of open learning are wide ranging. Thus, even in a developing country, open learning methods can be applied differentially according to the needs of groups or communities. Where the numbers are large and the distances great, the cost-benefits can be highly attractive, even if the infrastructural investments are huge.

Open Schooling

There is now a substantial body of experience and many models among developing countries demonstrating that open schooling is a viable and powerful alternative and complementary approach to conventional schooling. I will mention a few as examples.

Among these are the Indian National Open School and the Basic Functional Educational Programme of Allama Ibqal Open University of Pakistan for those outside the school system. Indonesia has developed it's "Packet A" programme for literacy and post-literacy needs of out-of-school-youths and the SNT Terbukar for open junior secondary school.

We also have the experiences of Mexico’s Telesecundaria, Brazil’s "A Leap to the Future", and China’s TV Teachers’ College for teacher training, the last two using satellite broadcast TV for dissemination.

The Malawi College of the Air uses radio to support distance secondary education, enrolments of which have exceeded that of conventional schools for many years. The Mauritius College of the Air similarly provides a wide range of educational programmes via TV and radio.

There are innumerable community-based programmes, which time does not permit me to mention. The contribution of the Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are outstanding in this area.

UNESCO’s Role

UNESCO is the agency mandated by the United Nations to provide leadership in all matters pertaining to meeting the need for education, and it has exercised this role constantly in all the leading edges of education, including the development of the education process and Open Learning.

Against the backdrop of critical needs and developments I have just briefly reviewed, as early as 1996 UNESCO launched the "Learning Without Frontiers" initiative. In the words of our Director General, Mr. Federico Mayor:

"The Learning Without Frontiers initiative will promote education increasingly free from restrictions as to when, where or what age and in what circumstances it is to take place. While recognising the importance of the existing educational delivery systems, both formal and nonformal, this initiative will seek to extend, improve and complement them and to develop new and flexible forms of education and training, including community-based actions, distance education and open learning systems."

LWF has transfused many on-going programmes and partnerships. It has been a portent inspiration in programmes addressing basic education at the community level, among others by NGOs. I would like here to acknowledge the work of my colleague at UNESCO Mr. Jan Visser for his contributions in this area.

At UNESCO we are ever conscious that countries and technical co-operation agencies need to work together. In the field of secondary education, UNESCO will shortly be initiating a major move for the international educational community to come together within a "consortium" approach, together with countries to establish a new Vision and Policies for Secondary Education Reform. I am encouraged that preliminary consultations have evoked strong positive support for the initiative, and I anticipate that there will be the widest participation, with positive outcomes.

UNESCO will also be convening the Second World Congress on Technical and Vocational Education in Seoul, South Korea on 26-30 April this year. Again the congress will be looking heavily to wide collaborative participation from countries and international agencies to set the directions for the next millennium in this critical sector. COL and the British Council will be leading a Roundtable on Open Learning. and I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Countries and technical co-operation are inevitably divided by language groupings. Thus, the extensive work of the Agence de la Francophone based in Bordeaux may not be familiar or available to anglophone countries, and quite possibly the French-speaking countries may likewise not enjoy the fruits of your work. The same applies to the countries speaking the other principal languages of the world, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Russian. One of UNESCO's constant activities is to bring the world together on all fundamental issues of education. Thus through global leadership, by such steps as the Delors Report and the world conferences on adult and higher education and soon TVE, it seeks to provide common and united platforms for action.

I believe that through many diverse and convergent developments education has greatly widened the options and possibilities for responding at all pressure points of education. The more difficult part is implementation, i.e. getting it done.

Implementation

Madam Chairperson, Ladies and Gentlemen

Implementation is the responsibility of the country’s leadership. But it has been long acknowledged that technical co-operation is an essential component of implementation. Both are therefore fundamental implementation pressure points.

Drawing from my own experience as former Minister of Education of Mauritius, and more recently as Education Policy Adviser at the World Bank and now as UNESCO Director for Renovation of Secondary and Vocational Education, I would like today humbly to offer the following thoughts on increasing implementation effectiveness.

Role of a Master Plan

Firstly, countries must retain the right, and accordingly have the responsibility, to determine their priorities and programmes of educational development. To my knowledge, only about 10% of resources for implementation come from aid.. The rest must be found from within the country. Also, all frontiers of educational development must be addressed simultaneously. From my own experience, the most crucial first step is to formulate and install an overall Educational Master Plan, including the financial budget and the technical assistance and aid requirements. Hot on the heels of Jomtien, this was the objective I pursued and I am happy to say that, with the invaluable support of UNDP and UNESCO Mauritius adopted a Master Plan within a little over one year. One outstanding benefit was that we were able to mobilise technical assistance in a coherent fashion. The Plan also formed the basis for a number of World Bank loans executed in a minimum of time. There are many parallel experiences in other countries. This gives me confidence to say that a Master Plan approach is a highly recommendable approach to educational planning and for mobilisation of both internal and external resources.

New Implementation Tools

As Minister I had attended many conferences like this. I always came back inspired by the declarations and recommendations, but sometimes I was frustrated by how to implement them. It was clear to me that a country needed technical co-operation. But the processes seemed to take too long. Often, a country has strong expertise and competence, but these people need quick access to information & guidance, examples of best practices, costing techniques, and access to consultation. The old methods of missions, consultancies and training seminars seemed by themselves inadequate. What I would have liked would have been comprehensive and standardised methodologies and processes for self-application available to my education people on the spot. I believe there is great room for creating dedicated and structured tools in these areas, and if for nothing else for open learning, and making them available on the Internet. These will reach all levels of users, and help internal communication say between education and finance, will not disappear with the encumbent of a job and will be enormously cost and time saving in consultancies, etc. My conversations with participants here suggest that there is strong emerging recognition of this need. It seems almost obvious that the very means available for open learning should be thoroughly exploited to help development planning. UNESCO is presently taking the lead to develop such a website tool to be named the "TVE Implementation Centre" We are actively seeking partners in this task and preliminary feedback is most encouraging. The World Bank yesterday shared their initiative on similar lines in their Distance Education GlobalNet.

Alliances and Comparative Advantages

Technical co-operation bodies need equally to come together in consortia and alliances to support countries based on their functions, areas of competence and comparative advantages - subject of course always to the wishes of the country. I need not highlight that the new information and communication technologies not only enable this but practically demand it for efficiency and effectiveness, as may be seen in the mergers and alliances of even giants in the business world. Inter-dependence should be the principle. Let me take this further. Sometimes, it is natural for the lead agencies to extend their activities into supporting areas of work to enhance and cut down delays in their own missions. My belief is: that the technical co-operation community must avoid such activity where others can better do it. Instead, they should operate in functional alignment among themselves, and in fact actually help develop each other’s capabilities. They should rely . on each other’s specialist capabilities for implementation. Again much is being done. But much more can be done. My question is: can this be made an International norm for working, so that even countries accept the principle? At heart of course it depends on acceptability of the work for funding support. Thus the lending and grant agencies must take the lead to install this approach while the others should seek to fulfil lending norms and criteria, in their areas of work.

Promise of Peace

Finally, the greatest threats to the world today are poverty and ignorance on the one hand and armed conflict on the other. The key is education. The problem is the enormity of the resources needed. The bulk of these resources will have to be released from the countries themselves. Countries must review their spending priorities, especially as regards armament. It has been estimated that it would cost an additional US$ 7-8 billion a year over 10 years to finance universal primary education. This represents just 4 days’ worth of global military spending. Is it not possible to re-allocate this (mere) amount? The answer lies in education for the Culture of Peace. Recognising this, the United Nations has declared next year the Year for the Culture of Peace, and the next decade the Decade for Peace. My call today is that the international community must incorporate the culture of peace as integral component of their educational support strategies.

The Commonwealth of Learning

Madam Chairperson

Since its inception, the Commonwealth of Learning has been in the forefront of technical co-operation. As it celebrates a decade of outstanding work, its presence and help has been appreciated in every member country and in the international community. I would like to pay special tribute to Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan, whose leadership and pioneering work as President and CEO, has positioned COL in its outstanding leadership in international technical co-operation.

As early as 1995, UNESCO entered into an Agreement with the Commonwealth of Learning to participate in each other's activities in all areas of common interest. Through initiatives made by Professor Dhanarajan, UNESCO and COL are currently finalising a new joint Work Plan, which covers a wide range of areas. You will be interested to know that UNESCO and COL have agreed to explore the setting up of a Copyright Fund for Education to facilitate the transfer of courseware and set up a global facility to buy licences from owners of copyright of a wide range of educational materials. I am also happy to say that Professor Dhanarajan has agreed that COL will participate fully in the consortium for Secondary Education Reform and the development of the TVE Implement Tool website.

Finally, we were all, I am sure, electrified by the announcement yesterday by the Chairman of the World Space Corporation offering to make available for educational purposes 5% of the capacity of their global broadcasting system. In his words, "this is our offer on the table. What is yours?" I am happy to say that UNESCO and COL have agreed in principle to join forces to explore all possibilities to exploit this offer for the benefit of all countries. We look forward to other partners in this venture.