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• The Commonwealth of Learning: Helping you achieve your goals

The Commonwealth of Learning: Helping you achieve your goals

Date: 11 Dec 2006
Speaker: Sir John Daniel (President), Professor Asha Kanwar (Vice-President)
Location: 16th Conference of Commonwealth Ministers of Education, Cape Town, South Africa

Honourable Ministers:

It is a pleasure for my colleagues and me to present the programme of work for the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) for 2006-09.

COL’s Purpose and Assets
We begin by reminding you of the purpose of COL, which is to help Commonwealth governments and institutions use various technologies to improve and expand education, training and learning in support of development.
As Ministers, the special assets that COL brings to you are:

- We work for you because we are an intergovernmental organisation;
- We bring first-class expertise in all aspects of learning technologies;
- We work mostly by South-South collaboration;
- We represent development without donors – we help to create sustainable and self replicating initiatives in your countries and with your institutions;

- And, we have developed a number of successful and transferable models for fostering development through learning.
One particularly successful model that has proved powerful and cost-effective in many countries is distance learning. This is because it allows you to achieve economies of scale, geographical reach across whole countries, and cost-effective flexibility.

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth
Another emerging model, based on the idea that you yourselves conceived at the 14th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Halifax, is the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth. This now involves 26 of the 32 Small States of the Commonwealth and is gaining good momentum.

Learning for Development
COL is evolving in response to your agenda. We summarise this in our changing ‘strap line’ or motto. For the last three years it was Capacity Building for Open and Distance Learning. For the next three years it is simply Learning for Development.
By ‘development’ we mean the combination of the Millennium Development Goals, the Dakar Goals of Education for All, and the Commonwealth values of Peace, Democracy, Equality and Good Governance.

We have done a very thorough job in preparing this plan. We have sought feedback on priorities from across the Commonwealth in formal and informal ways and note four challenges in particular:

First is to help hundreds of millions of youngsters towards sustainable livelihoods.
Second is to counter HIV/AIDS, a development disaster;

Third, the education of women is a priority for nearly all of you and this is a task for which distance learning has a proven and successful track record.

Finally, the digital divide was a special concern at the Heads of Government meeting in Malta. COL provides the Commonwealth with its best bridge across this divide.

We also commissioned a formal external evaluation of our work for you in 2003-06. It told us that:

- We should offer fewer programmes and continue them for longer;
- We should link tightly to your priorities;
- We should offer programmes, not projects, and
- We should emphasise partnership and networking.

The Framework of the Three-Year Plan
This has led us to develop a simple plan. It has three programme sectors: Education, Learning for Livelihoods, and Human Environment.

In each of them we seek one or more of four outcomes:
- Policy at government or institutional level;
- New or improved systems for technology-mediated learning;
- Models for applying learning technology to particular development goals; and
- Materials that can be used across the Commonwealth.

In each Sector we have limited ourselves to five initiatives, five areas where we offer assistance to you.
In Education, for example, they are Quality Assurance, Teacher Development, Open or Alternative Schooling; Higher Education and eLearning for Education Sector Development.

Similarly there are five initiatives in the Learning for Livelihoods area which are explained in the Plan document that you have, and similarly with the third sector, Human Environment.

Country Planning
For this Conference we have given you two documents. First there is the Three-Year Plan for 2006-09 which I have just explained. Second, are the Country Reports for 2003-06. In this booklet you will find an account of what COL has been doing in your country. This is our way of showing our accountability to you and also of providing a foundation for our work with you over the next three years.

For that purpose we have prepared a Country Action Proposal for each country. The aim is to take the fifteen initiatives in our Plan and match them to your priorities. In a good number of cases we have been able to hold a dialogue with you or your officials and convert these into a Country Action Plan. For those countries where we had not managed to have that dialogue before this conference we have tried to do it here, so we will go back to Vancouver with Plans for most countries. These are, of course, dynamic documents which can evolve as your priorities change. But they provide a starting point for our operational planning and for scheduling our work around the Commonwealth.

So what we ask of you, Honourable Ministers, is to continue the dialogue about your priorities so that we can finalise your Country Action Plan and keep it up to date. We also invite you to get involved in our work. That applies especially to the Ministers from Small States and the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth. The VUSSC is your project, and its success in your country will depend largely on the commitment that you and your institutions make to it.
Request to endorse and fund the Plan.

Finally, but very importantly, it is your task to endorse COL’s Three-Year Plan and commit to funding it. COL is a small agency with a total of only 40 staff in Vancouver and New Delhi. However, we believe that we punch well above our weight and we hope that you find our work valuable for you.

As you can see from this graph, COL’s funding has been on a steadily rising trend for the last decade and we hope to reach a budget of 12 million Canadian dollars in the period of this plan.
Therefore, on behalf of COL’s Board of Governors I formally present three recommendations:

- That you endorse the Three-Year Plan
- That you note the progress we have made in implementing the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, and
- That you agree the budget target of $12 million.

Honourable Ministers, thank you. The Commonwealth of Learning is proud of the help that it gives to you and of its close relationship with your Ministries. It has been a pleasure presenting to you and we look forward to implementing this Plan in partnership with you.
Thank you