Education Good Practice Awards 2009 receives forty-nine submissions

Forty-nine submissions have been received for the Commonwealth Education Good Practice Awards 2009.

By the deadline for these awards, which was 31 October, submissions had been made from 14 Commonwealth countries, including 11 entries from six small states.

Twenty-two entries were sent in through ministries of education and civil society organisations in Malaysia and Nigeria – 11 from each country. The remaining entries were submitted from ministries and organisations in Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Cyprus, The Gambia, Ghana, India, Mauritius, Pakistan, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

The winners of the Education Awards will be announced in Malaysia in June 2009 at the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers.

"We define ‘good practices’ for these awards as projects, policies, strategies or significant interventions which have made a positive difference to primary school children and their teachers or to the school system of a country," said Dr Roli Degazon-Johnson, Education Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The adjudication process will commence on 19 November, when a 10-member shortlisting panel chaired by Tan Sri Dr Zulkarnain Awang, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Education, Malaysia, will meet in London, UK, to assess and evaluate the submissions.

Other members on this adjudication panel include: Duncan Howitt from Australia; Niall Wilkins from South Africa; Victoria Farley from Trinidad and Tobago; Matete Nena from Lesotho; Flossie Gomile-Chidyaonga from Malawi; and Mary Arnold from St Lucia, all of whom are Commonwealth Education Liaisons. Jill Hart, Co-ordinator at the Commonwealth Education Fund, Peter Williams, Honorary Secretary of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, and Jenny Groves, Vice-President of the Commonwealth Countries League, complete the panel.

Ministers of education first proposed the idea of awards for good and promising practices in education across the Commonwealth in 2003. This led to the first Good Practice Awards being launched in 2005, which identified a number of worthy projects during the year-long period of adjudication.

Click here for the full list of submissions

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