Commonwealth of Learning
Board of Governors
Board and Staff Planning Retreat, 17 June 2008
Preparing COL's 2009-12 Three-Year Plan
Introductory remarks by
Sir John Daniel
President
It is a pleasure to welcome on behalf of our Acting Chair, Mr Ransford Smith, Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, who has asked me to be master of ceremonies for this morning's retreat. I express our warm thanks to Ransford for stepping in at short notice to chair yesterday's meeting of the Executive Committee and the Board meeting this afternoon.
As you know Burchell Whiteman had an impossible conflict because a grand meeting of the Jamaican diaspora is taking place in Kingston right now and, as High Commissioner in London, he had to lead the Jamaican delegation from the UK. I am most grateful to him for making a heroic effort to be here on Sunday and yesterday to get us started.
May I also extend the warm greetings of the COL staff to those who are at the Board table for the first time: Dame Carol Kidu, from Papua New Guinea, who represents the Pacific region on the Board; Dr Linda Sissons, representing New Zealand; Shri R.P.Agrawal, representing India; and Professor John Tarrant, Secretary-General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, who is an Advisor to our Board, as I am, by a reciprocal arrangement, to the ACU Council.
I am pleased to say that I have previously met all four of our new colleagues in their home countries and it is a pleasure to welcome you to Vancouver.
My role now is to introduce this Planning Retreat of the Board and the Staff. The aim of this morning's event is to get Board members' input into the preparation of COL's next Three-Year Plan at a moment when the shape and content of the plan is still malleable.
You can see from this schedule that we are at the beginning of the process. Over the last two years Professor Kanwar and her assistant, Jasmine Lee, have done a tremendous job creating and nurturing a network of focal points for COL in each Commonwealth country. We are calling on these focal points to give us feedback on COL's work and to tell us about those of their national priorities for the coming years that fall within COL's mandate.
So far, as you can see, we have held a meeting of the Caribbean focal points in Jamaica, where all countries were represented. This was followed by a similar meeting in Malawi. Except for colleagues from Nigeria and Zambia, who did not get their visas in time, all African Commonwealth countries were there. In October we plan a focal points meeting for Asia and the Pacific, either in Brunei or Malaysia. Later in this morning Professor Kanwar will summarise the outcomes of the first two focal points meetings.
Before that, as you can see from your programme, we are inviting brief presentations from the three international development agencies represented on the Board: the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); the Department for International Development of the UK (DFID) and the New Zealand Agency for International Development (NZAID). We have asked them to give brief summaries of the priorities of their agencies as they relate to COL's mission.
The most recent Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in South Africa in 2006 encouraged the Commonwealth intergovernmental agencies involved in education to harmonise their work and present a Commonwealth agenda. Along with COL, the Commonwealth Secretariat is the key player through its Social Transformation Programmes Division.
ComSec works on a 4-year planning cycle and Professor Kanwar and I were present in London last month when the Board of Governors approved ComSec's Strategic Plan for the period 2008-12. We have invited the Deputy Secretary-General, Mr Ransford Smith, to present the highlights of that Plan as it relates to education.
Professor Kanwar will then summarise the conclusions of the Focal Points meetings in the Caribbean and Africa. I hope that these will be fairly congruent with the priorities of the development agencies and ComSec. We can discuss any differences of emphasis in the session that follows. Over the years Commonwealth Ministers of Education have come to see COL as their agency working to their agendas. That is a precious asset and the key backdrop to our planning.
Professor Kanwar will then give a brief presentation of the current thinking of our staff about the content and outcomes of the 2009-12 Three-Year Plan. These are our working hypotheses and the breakout session that follows will give you a chance to challenge them and suggest changes. We shall conclude by coming back together as the full group for a general discussion.
Let me now say a word about my own perspective on COL's work in the coming years. Last year the Performance Committee asked me to write a short paper on my vision of the challenges and opportunities of COL's third decade for this year's meeting. They then asked that it be circulated to the whole Board. If you have had a chance to read it I hope you found it helpful. Here I shall focus briefly on ten points from the paper.
First, although COL is small, it is a strong and effective organisation. Despite ups and downs in the 1990s it has consistently given satisfaction to its stakeholders. Today three-quarters of Commonwealth governments support us voluntarily and a goodly number have increased their support recently. Ten Member States commented on our work at the recent ComSec Board meeting and all expressed great satisfaction with it.
Second, I give you the theme 'radical incrementalism', which surfaced in the government of Canada five years ago, as a useful principle for international development in unpredictable times. I take it to mean that you have to start from where you are but find new ways of moving forward. COL is good at that.
Third, and in that spirit, we have a robust plan for the current triennium. If we believe in radical incrementalism it would be stupid to take a tabula rasa approach in preparing the next plan. We would do better to tighten our focus still further and steadily refine those models for fostering development through learning technology that are working.
Fourth, although we take the combination of the Millennium Development Goals, the Education for All Goals of Dakar and Commonwealth values as our framework for defining development, we clearly cannot take on that whole agenda. Where can we add most value in the global thrust to achieve the MDGs and the EFA goals? Your views on that would be particularly valuable. We are very excited by the invitation from the new Commonwealth Secretary-General to prepare multi-media learning materials to promote the report of Amartya Sen's Commission on Respect and Understanding.
Fifth, the psychology of development assistance is changing as China and India gain influence in Africa. COL is supported by the donor agencies that you will be hearing from, but the motto for our work in the field to use local resources. COL tries to help people to help themselves by sharing experience between developing countries. We think this approach suits the times.
Sixth, COL is already engaged with the topical development issues and does not have to chase after new fashions. For example, COL has valuable experience in addressing the food crisis by education for better livelihoods at the village level. In the paper I quote a recent issue of The Economist that 'ideally a big part of the supply response would come from the world's 450m smallholders in developing countries who farm just a few acres'. COL knows how to help them become more productive. The challenge, about which we are talking to the Gates Foundation, is to scale up the solution. I am delighted that the new Secretary-General is also taking a special interest in our Lifelong Learning for Farmers initiative and has offered to help find extra funds for its extension in Africa.
Seventh, an important part of my vision is for COL to be a thought-leader in development. That may sound pretentious for a tiny organisation but I believe that small can be radical as well as beautiful. Our Lifelong Learning for Farmers initiative, our work on open schooling, and our experience with using open educational resources are just three areas where COL is leading the thinking and is in demand for that reason.
Eighth, COL is unique among development agencies in focussing exclusively on learning technologies. We have an unrivalled understanding of that field and we know that technology means new approaches and new models as well as new devices and new networks. We help countries and institutions organise themselves to ensure that electronic technologies bridge digital divides durably.
Ninth, COL is very well positioned with regard to the vital Commonwealth and global priority of assisting small states. All but two of the 32 Commonwealth small states are now involved in the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, a network which COL coordinates on behalf of Ministers of Education. The VUSSC, as we call it, is an important asset for any initiative involving these wonderfully diverse but economically fragile countries.
Tenth, and finally, COL is fully up to speed in the world of Web2 - the interactive web. We know our way around the leading edge of technology and as media and ICTs become an integrated whole, we are well equipped to bring the leading edge and the trailing edge closer together so that all can benefit.
I trust that those ten points will be useful background to our discussions this morning.
My vision, which I invite you to share, is that Commonwealth countries will instinctively turn to COL as their preferred and trusted partner whenever they see the opportunity to use learning technologies in the achievement of their development goals.
My ambition, which I also invite you to share, is that the international development community will increasingly look to us as the thought leader in learning for development.