THREE-YEAR PLAN 

Three-Year Plan, 2009-2012

COL’s Three-Year Plan for 2009-2012, Learning for Development, is available for download on the right. This final version replaces three previous drafts that have been posted for discussion. This final version will be presented to Commonwealth Ministers of Education for their endorsement at their 17th triennial Conference (CCEM) to be held in Kuala Lumpur in June 2009.

Learning for Development includes an executive summary, a welcome message from our Board Chair, H.E. the Hon. Burchell Whiteman, a foreword from COL President, Sir John Daniel, a fold-out Logic Model and a summary of the external evaluation of COL’s work during 2006-2009.

The plan benefits from Commonwealth-wide consultation through various formal and informal channels including meetings of COL’s country Focal Points and COL’s Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (London, July 2008).

Also available for download on the right is Logic Model, the external evaluation of COL’s work during 2006-2009, COL in the Commonwealth 2006-2009 (a compendium of reports on COL’s work in each Commonwealth country in the last three years) and a file containing references for various quotes contained in the Three-Year Plan.

COL is also working with Ministries of Education in preparing Country Action Plans in order to ensure that the implementation of Learning for Development in each country will closely match the Government’s priorities for COL’s work.

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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