Opening of the Stakeholders Forum (16 CCEM)
Date: 10 Dec 2006
Speaker: Secretary-General Don McKinnon
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Ladies and gentlemen’, etc. I’m fresh off the plane and a late arrival at the party – and this is a party with a difference.
A ‘party of five parts’:
- a Youth Forum which opened two hours ago - this Stakeholders Forum opening now -the first ever Teachers Forum at a Commonwealth Education Ministers Meeting, opening tonight - the Senior Officials Meeting tomorrow morning - and the Ministerial Meeting itself tomorrow evening.
So: ‘a five-part party’, with 1000 delegates. My colleagues have taken to calling it ‘the Mother of all Ministerials’, and they may well be right. And since South Africans know Cape Town as the Mother City, there’s a certain symmetry. I share all our expectations for this meeting.
This is known as the ‘Stakeholders meeting’ – those ‘stakeholders’ being civil society representatives, businesses, and academics. But of course we are all stakeholders, as citizens of a world whose progress and fortunes are so intimately linked with whether - and how - our children and our children’s children are educated.
It’s a message which I know is dear to the heart of our keynote speaker Graca Machel this morning. Among her many titles, she is Founder and President of the Foundation for Community Development in Mozambique. And whatever she does, she brings vision, energy and passion. Graca, thank you for being with us.
But let me start by repeating a message, which I’ll repeat several more times this week.
Nothing, but nothing, is more important to our Commonwealth citizens and societies than education. Education is the key to everything. It is the key to literally billions of unique human beings fulfilling their unique potential. More than that, it’s the key to peace and democratic stability, to jobs and economic growth, to good health, to respect and harmony between the sexes, and between different faiths, ethnic groups and communities.
You may know that today is International Human Rights Day. It’s the day on which we repeat that universal and equal access for boys and girls to primary education is not just a development goal: it’s a fundamental human right.
That’s the first half of the context for this meeting – the upbeat part.
The second half of the context is the downbeat part.
It’s this: over 30 million Commonwealth children get no primary schooling, and over 45 million of them get no secondary schooling. The developing world in particular needs more teachers, and better teachers. This continent of Africa alone needs another 5 million of them if it’s going to achieve universal primary education by 2015.
In 2000 the world committed itself to meeting two particular Millennium Development Goals in education: putting all children through primary school; and ensuring equal numbers of boys and girls in primary and secondary school. Since then, the world has made advances – some of them huge, and some of them in the Commonwealth, especially in places like Bangladesh, India, Tanzania and Uganda. But the world is still failing to meet those Goals.
Let’s state this clearly: the primary responsibility for changing this situation lies with governments. Yes, donors and international organisations can help, but the onus is on governments, and that’s why the ‘M’ in ’16 CCEM’ stands for Ministers.
But civil society, business and academia are vital to that work, too. This Stakeholders Forum is an integral part of 16 CCEM. I’m reminded that the first Stakeholders Forum at 13 CCEM in 1997 was really just an exhibition of education products and services. How it has evolved? This Forum now presents us with a new Commonwealth frontier, and I pay particular tribute to those who have made this happen.
So – many thanks to the Centre for Education Policy Development, to the British Council and the Department of Education here, to Nexus publishers, and to all who have worked so hard to make this event happen.
Within the Commonwealth family, I extend my thanks to my civil society education colleagues: I’m proud to say that there are no less than 22 such organizations accredited to the Commonwealth, all passionately committed to this very real cause of education in the Commonwealth.
They span everything from the Commonwealth Countries League, tirelessly generating resources for girls’ education in Africa and Asia – to the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, with its ground-breaking research on some of the negative trends in primary school enrolment in Africa – to the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management, with its hard-hitting findings on the importance of school leadership, embodied in head teachers.
And I’m proud too that all these bodies come together as the Commonwealth Consortium for Education. I thank them, and particularly Peter Williams, for the 12 comprehensive briefing materials for this Meeting. I know that the CCEC has just had its own meeting in Zonnebloom. Its subject there has been strengthening the partnerships between schools, colleges, and communities across the Commonwealth that bring people together in a very human way and break down barriers between peoples.
My message today is that you are the people – NGOs, businesses, academics – who can and do make a real difference to education.
So to civil society, I say …. … that you have been instrumental in experimenting with new ideas… in pointing out the limitations of state management of the education sector …. in championing the rights of girls in education …
From so many, a real example is BRAC: the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. It’s an NGO which has in effect taken over much of the primary education in that country.
To the business community, I say…
That you already run for-profit educational institutions and have now started investing significantly in socially responsible endeavours. Yet you need to take more risks in the areas that might not seem to be of direct concern but are crucial, like girls’ education, remote rural areas and children with special needs. You have an interest in doing so: an educated workforce is good for business and investments. In a globalised world, you need skilled men and women, in urban as well as rural areas, for businesses to survive and flourish.
Each of us will have our favourite examples of business involvement in education – everything from the giant Microsoft providing subsidised products to schools in Uganda, to the smallest local company doing its bit.
I like the story of the ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment in India. The physicist who headed research efforts at a fast-growing software and education company in New Delhi put a PC with a high-speed internet connection into a wall in the slums. What followed was a lesson for the whole world to watch. It showed that even terribly poor kids with little education, can quickly teach themselves the rudiments of computer literacy.
To the academic community, I say…
Thank you for showing us new pathways. Without you we would be much more static, and perhaps boring! Even when you are tough on governments, who can deny that it gets the best out of them? We needed a Nobel Laureate and Professor in Amartya Sen to argue for enhanced investment in education, health and gender equality. He did so passionately and convincingly at our last CCEM. I well remember him quoting HG Wells: ‘human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe’.
NGOs and academics are increasingly coming together to invest in education. I myself am familiar with the Beyond Access project in the UK, bringing together London University and Oxfam to work on girls’ education in Africa and Asia.
So all of you are vital parts of the education equation. All of you are called to do more. All of you must be accountable in the process.
You have a real chance to make yourself heard at this meeting. You are issuing a statement, and that statement will be produced in time for Ministers to discuss it in plenary session on Thursday. Use that statement.
I remember well the Stakeholders Forum at 15 CCEM in Edinburgh. The abiding memory was of civil society clamouring for an active part in implementing the six Education Action Areas which Ministers set us at that Meeting.
What goes around, comes around: the Commonwealth Consortium for Education then used all their expertise and networks to undertake a policy study on the sustainability of universal primary education – and the study will be presented to Ministers on Wednesday. That’s solid proof of delivery.
I ask myself how the 16 CCEM Stakeholders Meeting will be remembered. My immediate answer is that it will be remembered, as a powerful voice and a powerful commitment, if you all remember why we are here.
There are 1.3 billion young people aged between 12 and 24 in the developing world. We have a choice. We either reap the benefits of this demographic dividend by ensuring that they are educated and equipped for life in a globalised world. Or we miss it, and see them grow into middle age uneducated and marginalized, at a huge personal cost to them as individuals, and at a huge social, political and economic cost for all of us. That's the meaning of the expression 'for the good of all' in 16 CCEM’s title.
If we all realize that we are all stakeholders in young people’s futures – in the world’s future, no less – then our Stakeholders Forum will make a difference. Thank you.
ENDS
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