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$Vijay Krishnarayan, Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Foundation (left) with Dr Caroline Pontefract, Director responsible for education at the Commonwealth Secretariat$

Vijay Krishnarayan, Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Foundation (left) with Dr Caroline Pontefract, Director responsible for education at the Commonwealth Secretariat

Experts call for stronger links between government and civil society on education

16 September 2009

Important role of Commonwealth civil society discussed at top education conference

Education in the Commonwealth could be boosted by stronger engagement between government and civil society, panellists said at a top education conference in Oxford, UK, yesterday (Tuesday, 15 September 2009).

The biennial UKFIET international conference brings together education experts from around the world with a specific focus on development.

The symposium was chaired by Dr Caroline Pontefract, Director responsible for education at the Commonwealth Secretariat, and addressed the theme ‘Policies, Politics and Educational Progress in the Commonwealth’.

It reviewed the important role played by civil society in advancing education in the Commonwealth through advocacy work, the forums which run parallel to the triennial meetings of Commonwealth education ministers, and by providing continuity between these meetings.

Vijay Krishnarayan, Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Foundation, emphasised the value of civil society as a repository for institutional memory. While ministers frequently change their portfolios between intergovernmental meetings, civil society organisations can provide an ongoing link, he said.

Mr Krishnarayan also stressed the responsibility of civil society organisations in monitoring ministerial commitments.

Education is “firmly rooted” in the Commonwealth principles of exchange and development, he said. Civil society is at the heart of keeping the education sector alive in the Commonwealth. It was civil society which helped evolve innovations such as the Commonwealth of Learning, which assists developing nations with access to quality education and training through encouraging open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.

Heads of Government had made it clear that they would like to see further civil society engagement, Mr Krishnarayan added, citing their 2007 call for the inclusion of civil society in all Commonwealth ministerial meetings.

He highlighted the potential for the Commonwealth Consortium for Education (CCE) to play a bigger role in joining up the voices of disparate educational forums.

The CCE was spawned out of the mandate by Commonwealth education ministers who met in Oxford 50 years ago for the first time. The Consortium was established by a group of education-related Commonwealth NGOs, to co-ordinate their efforts on behalf of Commonwealth education. It provides a collective mechanism for interaction with ministries and official Commonwealth organisations.

Mark Robinson, former London Chair of the CCE, said the organisation had been an important advocate on education issues, most recently on funding threats to the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan - another lasting legacy of the 1959 conference. To date, over 25,000 scholars have benefited from this prestigious fund, which offers a genuine academic partnership between developing and developed countries.

Rasheda Choudhury, Executive Director of the Campaign for Popular Education, Bangladesh, stressed a need for realism in addressing the educational needs of Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth’s diversity is also about a diversity of resources, including technological resources, she said. Many Commonwealth people still have no access to basic needs such as power, safe water and education.

While praising governments for making time-bound targets for the first time in history, she highlighted that there was lack of accountability with regard to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. “More than 70 countries (worldwide) missed the Gender parity goal for 2005, yet no-one was talking about it inside the United Nations,” she said. “No one challenged the states or brought them to account.”

Education is not a commodity, but a human right, she stressed. Political commitment to these goals was key to achieving them, and improved dialogue between civil society organisations and governments could help facilitate this.

Earlier, the UKFIET (United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training) conference was opened with a speech by former Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal.

Sir Shridath addressed the overarching conference theme of politics, policies and progress, in a speech on ‘Education: Jewel in the Commonwealth Crown’.

He told delegates there had been “remarkable progress” over the past 50 years in Commonwealth education, but warned “any satisfaction ... with what has been achieved must be tempered by the recognition that we still have far to travel in meeting the challenges both of quality, and of inequality, within and between nations.”