Commonwealth Secretariat
  1. Education Home
  2. What We Do
    1. Mitigating the Impact of HIV/AIDS
    2. Universal Primary Education
    3. Eliminating Gender Disparities
    4. Supporting Education in Difficult Circumstances
    5. Improving Quality in Education
    6. Overcoming Geographical Barriers
    7. Collaborative Partnerships
    8. Working Group on Teacher Recruitment
    9. Statistics
  3. Background
  4. Ministerial Meetings
    1. 16CCEM - Cape Town Communiqué
    2. Good Practice Awards
  5. Meetings and Events
  6. News Archive
  7. Documents
    1. Education Reports
    2. 16CCEM
    3. Speeches
    4. Communiqués
  8. Resources
  9. Publications

What We Do

The Education Section draws its mandate from the Commonwealth Ministers of Education who meet triennially to track progress and decide new priorities. We work closely with the ministers in key countries supporting their determination to attain education-related millennium goals.

Nomadic Education

The education section aims to:

  • Achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE) in the Commonwealth by 2015.
  • Reduce gender disparities and promote equality in Commonwealth Education by 2015.
  • Assist Commonwealth member countries at risk of not achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
  • Strengthen the education sector’s response to HIV/AIDS in the Commonwealth and address its impacts on education.
  • Improve the quality of education, in particular by addressing the shortage of qualified teachers, promoting tolerance, values of democracy, human rights citizenship, peace and good governance.

The Section does this by undertaking policy studies on emerging education issues, disseminating information on trends in Commonwealth education developing tools for education practitioners, and sharing best practices on innovative strategies.

We scale up the Commonwealth’s impact by working with global and regional education networks and partners. These include the United Nations Girls Education Initiative, the School Fee Abolition Initiative, and the Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).

We work in close collaboration with other Commonwealth bodies including the Commonwealth of Learning, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Commonwealth Teachers’ Grouping and the Commonwealth Consortium for Education.

examples of what do:

  • In collaboration with ADEA, we have developed comprehensive teaching materials to support multi-grade teaching. This has been disseminated within Africa and also, at the request of governments, within the Pacific. The materials aim to improve the quality of teaching in remote and difficult circumstances.
  • We champion initiatives to promote gender responsive budgeting in education and produce publications to support gender mainstreaming in education policies.
  • At the request of Commonwealth Education Ministers, the section developed the 2004 Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol to balance the right of teachers to migrate with the need to protect the integrity of national education systems. This instrument on ethical recruitment and migration has been recognised by UNESCO, the ILO, the Organization of American States, the African Union and Commonwealth Heads of Government.

 

EXPLORE What We Do