UNESCO Educational Leadership Meeting

As a follow-up of the Incheon World Education Forum and Qingdao Conference on ICT in Post 2015, UNESCO Educational Leadership Meeting was organized on the initiative of Mr. Tang, Assistant Director-General for Education, and held on 28-30 June, 2015. The meeting gathered the heads of all Category 1 Institutes of UNESCO, regional offices on education and key staff members of the Education Sector for discussions under the supervision of Mr. Tang (Assistant Director-General for Education), Mr. Atchoarena (Director of Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems) and Mr. Osttveit (Executive Office Director for Education). Prof. Alexander Khoroshilov, UNESCO IITE Officer-in-Charge, represented the Institute and took part in all discussions and events of the ED Leadership Meeting agenda. Several IITE’s proposals on ICT in education presented at the meeting have been accepted and supported by Mr. Tang.

One of the major goals of the meeting was to jointly identify the role of UNESCO in the implementation of the 2030 global agenda for education adopted at the World Education Forum for the upcoming 15 years and presented in the Qingdao Declaration, the first global declaration on ICT in education. In the framework of the first session of the meeting “Education 2030: implications for UNESCO’s global/regional role as a lead coordinator”, the participants discussed the ways to build on the World Education Forum momentum as well as global coordination, steering and monitoring mechanisms that should be set-up. The discussion at the second session “Education 2030: country level engagement and implications for programme priorities” covered the ways and forms of technical assistance and capacity development that can be provided to Member States in operationalizing the new agenda including through identification of indicators and national benchmarks for monitoring. The participants discussed the ways the Education Sector should re-orient its programme to better serve the new agenda at a country level and the ways to strengthen country level engagement, especially regarding non-developing countries.

The meeting was also aimed to review UNESCO’s programme and budget for the Education Sector, to discuss the possible future structure and UNESCO’s strategy as well as cooperation between the Headquarters, UNESCO Institutes and Field Offices.

Prof. Alexander Khoroshilov, UNESCO IITE Officer-in-Charge, held several meetings and negotiations with the participants and staff of the Headquarters to discuss the issues of cooperation with IITE and other important issues