UNESCO Institute for Education Programmes

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	Cluster 2 Follow-up of CONFINTEA V, Dakar Framework for Action and the United Nations Literacy Decade Acvtivities: South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People Training of Adult Educators through Distance Learning International Adult Learners Week Global Monitoring Report on EFA: Contributions Regarding Literacy, Non-formal Education, Adult and Lifelong Learning Indigenous Adult Education in Latin America: International Survey of Adult Education for Indigenous Peoples Reinforcing National Capacity to Evaluate NFE and Literacy Programmes for Young People and Adults Lifelong Learning and Social Exclusion: Prisoners South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People A South-South cooperation on outstanding experiences in capacity-building for adult learning took place in Mexico City in June. Four outstanding national programmes on education for adults and young people were presented. The meeting was organised by UIE and the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education (INEA/CONEVyT), in collaboration with the UNESCO office in Mexico City and the UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC). There was strong support from all UNESCO field offices and National Commissions of the countries represented at this meeting. Thirty-two delegates from 16 countries included participants from Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Lebanon, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Chile. The conference was also attended by all state directors of the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education, as well as other organisations involved in literacy and education for adults and young people. The four national programmes presented at the conference were: (1) the National Literacy Mission in India; (2) the Mexican INEA/CONEVyT Programme on “Education for Life and Work”; (3) the Literacy and Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) Programme in South Africa; and (4) the Brazilian Literacy Programme “Brasil Alfabetizado”. An important outcome of the conference was the systematisation of quality criteria in three thematic areas. These were: (a) content and curriculum useful and beneficial for the individual and community; (b) assessment, recognition, validation and certification; (c) planning, evaluation and financing. The meeting was seen by the delegates not only as a chance to improve the profile of adult education and an opportunity to learn from the innovative examples provided by different countries, but also as an opportunity to improve adult learning policies and undertake pilot projects and feasibility studies on a South-South basis. The first concrete result of the meeting is the dissemination of these four models for the development of a new Adult Basic Education Programme (ABEP) in Botswana and during the high-profile biennale meeting of African Ministers of Education in Gabon (Feb-March 2006). UIE will bring out a joint CONEVyT/INEA-UIE publication containing the revised contributions. The Mexico meeting set the tone for enlarging the coverage and integrating more countries in an even broader South-South policy dialogue on quality education for adults and young people. The second generation of dissemination of outstanding innovations will include China, Thailand and Namibia, among others. Contact: Madhu Singh Training of Adult Educators through Distance Learning As part of the CONFINTEA V programme on monitoring adult education, one of UIE’s priorities is to ensure that there are enough well-prepared adult educators to develop and implement high-quality programmes that will have an impact on human and socio-economic development. UIE has undertaken extensive studies on the state of the art of adult educators' training internationally. The Institute is now decentralising the implementation through strengthening the national training of adult educators. One of these national consultations was organised in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning's Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi. In January 2005, more than 30 experts from numerous national institutions (Ministry of Education, State Resource Centres, NGOs, Universities and Open Learning schools) participated in a two-day national consultation to exchange information, views and experiences, as well as discuss strategies to address the professional development of grassroots workers and the Preraks – the adult educators and facilitators of the National Literacy Mission of India who are responsible for setting up and running the Continuing Education Centres. The outcome has been the development of a curriculum using open and distance learning in close partnership with the State Resource Centres in four Indian States, namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. The curriculum design has taken into account the duties and responsibilities of the Preraks and incorporates the results of the need-based assessment exercises of the State Resource Centres. Modules will be developed around development and livelihood themes, mobilisation strategies, and guidelines on how to develop partnerships with stakeholders such as banks and financing institutions. Contact: Madhu Singh International Adult Learners Week The goal of International Adult Learners Week is to sustain and enlarge the worldwide cooperation among national learning festivals as a contribution to building lifelong learning cultures and societies. It also seeks to give new impetus to the learning-festivals movement by highlighting advocacy and mobilization at the crossroads of the CONFINTEA V Agenda, Education for All and the United Nations Literacy Decade. Following the International Adult Learners Week commemoration and embedded forum for policy dialogue in September 2004 in Cape Town, South Africa, the Ministry of Education and Research of Norway is hosting the 2005 International ALW commemoration on 24 – 26 October this year, in conjunction with their national Adult Learners Week. The theme chosen for this event is “Education for All in an Era of Increasing Mobility: The Implications for Adult Learning”. It aims to provide a forum for exchange, policy dialogue and advocacy on the importance of adult and lifelong learning. Mobility will serve as the overall background against which the role of adult learning will be examined both through the lenses of the EFA agenda – with a focus on life skills – and from the perspective of increasing participation and involvement in the sense of the CONFINTEA framework. The regional European Adult Learners Week network (IntALWinE), financed by the European Commission, will continue its activities along two lines: the mobilizing of learners and the technical backstopping of learning festivals. Following the first regional forum for adult learners, the same group of adult learners joined a study tour in May on the occasion of UK’s Adult Learners Week. The tour followed up on capacity-building and multiplying effects already achieved last year. The learners met with award-winning learners, both centrally and in two different local regions, talked with learners’ campaign experts, and explored the possibilities both for initiating national forums in their own countries and for consolidating the trans-national forum as a permanent advocacy mechanism. A core group was set up at the end of the tour as the driving force behind a more consolidated European network of adult learners. In parallel, a publication illustrating the experiences and aspirations of learners from 15 different countries (“I did it my way. Journeys of Learning in Europe”) was produced and widely distributed during the UK Adult Learners Week as well as in the partner countries of the network. While the bulk of the first half year of 2005 was dedicated to the mobilization of learners, materials useful for the technical backstopping and assessment of learning festivals was also collected: good and bad practices in implementing a learning festival, cooperation models (with media, decision-makers, providers, sponsors) and evaluation strategies. These will be posted on a publicly accessible data bank (web-based). A working meeting of the network in June (Reykjavik, Iceland) was used to review these activities and to tighten the planning for the remaining tasks (assessment, policy recommendations, final publication, wrap up of formal requirements for the European Commission). More Contact: Bettina Bochynek Global Monitoring Report on EFA: Contributions Regarding Literacy, Non-formal Education, Adult and Lifelong Learning UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All defines annually on a worldwide scale progress made towards the implementation of the Dakar Framework for Action with its aim of achieving six concrete targets in education by the year 2015. UIE’s role in the preparation of this study is to employ its knowledge base along with its networks and partnerships in order to collect the relevant data and produce reports affording a comprehensive picture of activities undertaken in the areas of the Institute’s expertise and mandate (literacy, non-formal education, and adult and lifelong learning). Special attention is given to the involvement of non-governmental and civil-society organizations such as the International Council of Adult Education in the EFA monitoring process and the channelling of information through them. UIE gathers the needed information in cooperation with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNESCO’s Monitoring Report Team. In preparation for the 2006 report focusing on literacy, UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report Team commissioned a series of background papers from UIE. Eight papers on the following topics were prepared by UIE: Literacy in Conflict Situations; Literacy in Botswana; Nicaragua's Literacy Campaign; Literacy for Special Target Groups; Libraries and the Literacy Environment; Literacy, HIV/AIDS and Gender; Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation in Literacy Programmes; and Literacy and Mother Tongue. The papers will inform the Global Monitoring Report on recent developments in UIE's fields of specialization by taking advantage of UIE's ongoing research activities. They will be made available to the public on the Monitoring Report Team's website by November 2005. The Institute provided substantive input (a consolidated collective response prepared by UIE's professional staff) to the UNESCO internal consultation on the report outline organized in February 2005. Contact: Werner Mauch Indigenous Adult Education in Latin America: International Survey of Adult Education for Indigenous Peoples UIE is providing thematic continuity to indigenous adult education in partnership with the Training Programme in Intercultural Bilingual Education for the Andean Countries, PROEIB Andes, the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and OREALC. As a follow-up action to the publication of the updated country studies on adult learning for indigenous peoples conducted in five Latin American countries and in light of the upcoming CONFINTEA VI, UIE in partnership with OREALC and PROEIB Andes proposed to organize a Latin American Observatory on Indigenous Youth and Adult Education. This project, which was formulated in a regional seminar last year, intends to begin work in five countries with a major indigenous presence, progressively opening up and involving others with fewer indigenous peoples. There is a manifest interest shown by countries on other continents to take part in the Observatory. The Observatory will mainly focus on literacy which is culturally and linguistically appropriate for indigenous youth and adults. OREALC is currently trying to find the necessary funds for a kick-off of the planned activities at country and regional level. In each of the participating countries project partners are also trying to raise funds. Contact: Ulrike Hanemann Reinforcing National Capacity to Evaluate NFE and Literacy Programmes for Young People and Adults As a contribution to the UNESCO Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), UIE is starting a project to enhance the impacts of the NFE and literacy programmes in African countries with in-built evaluation systems. This year, situation analysis of strategies, approaches and case studies of programme evaluation will be undertaken in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and Uganda. Cross-national workshops will review and analyse these country analyses and draft a comprehensive conceptual framework. Using the framework as a guide, the follow-up consultations in each country will develop guidelines and long-term national action plans for developing comprehensive evaluation systems for NFE and literacy programmes. UIE, in collaboration with field offices, will support the preparation of these papers and organisation of national consultation seminars. The Institute will collect innovative practical examples of evaluation in four areas: learner evaluation, curriculum evaluation, progress monitoring and impact evaluation. The first cycle is supported by UNESCO extra-budgetary funding for EFA. Further financial support will be needed to establish well-functioning, comprehensive monitoring and evaluation systems, thereby building a culture of improving both policies and practices in literacy based on informed decisions. Contact: Rika Yorozu Lifelong Learning and Social Exclusion: Prisoners Education in prison offers inmates not merely a vocational programme, but moreover a means of reconciliation with education and learning. At the same time, it can enrich the interrelation of learning and community (other inmates, family, social environment). UIE has taken an active role in two projects financed by the European Union. The first has to do with establishing a European network for taking stock of legislation as well as human resources and materials dedicated to this work. Some working groups are dwelling on the following problem areas: training of trainers and guards, obstacles to education, role of families, basic education, non-formal education, vocational training, health education. The second project has involved several European countries as well as the International Council on Adult Education, the Colegio Tlaxcala (Mexico) and Crisalida (a Brazilian non-governmental organization). A meeting in Florianópolis, Brazil, in June 2003 formulated proposals for educational materials specifically for migrants and young adults in prison. The brochure, with some examples, is available from UIE. In 2005, the first phase of the European Network will end. The international report on education in prison, a book on the dimensions of education in prison and some brochures (on the role of adult educators, needs of inmates, the role of families, non-formal education) will be prepared for publication. Contact: Marc de Maeyer

Cluster 2
Follow-up of CONFINTEA V, Dakar Framework for Action and the United Nations Literacy Decade

Acvtivities:
South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People
Training of Adult Educators through Distance Learning
International Adult Learners Week
Global Monitoring Report on EFA: Contributions Regarding Literacy, Non-formal Education, Adult and Lifelong Learning
Indigenous Adult Education in Latin America: International Survey of Adult Education for Indigenous Peoples
Reinforcing National Capacity to Evaluate NFE and Literacy Programmes for Young People and Adults
Lifelong Learning and Social Exclusion: Prisoners

South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People

A South-South cooperation on outstanding experiences in capacity-building for adult learning took place in Mexico City in June. Four outstanding national programmes on education for adults and young people were presented. The meeting was organised by UIE and the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education (INEA/CONEVyT), in collaboration with the UNESCO office in Mexico City and the UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC). There was strong support from all UNESCO field offices and National Commissions of the countries represented at this meeting. Thirty-two delegates from 16 countries included participants from Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Lebanon, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Chile. The conference was also attended by all state directors of the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education, as well as other organisations involved in literacy and education for adults and young people. The four national programmes presented at the conference were: (1) the National Literacy Mission in India; (2) the Mexican INEA/CONEVyT Programme on “Education for Life and Work”; (3) the Literacy and Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) Programme in South Africa; and (4) the Brazilian Literacy Programme “Brasil Alfabetizado”.

An important outcome of the conference was the systematisation of quality criteria in three thematic areas. These were: (a) content and curriculum useful and beneficial for the individual and community; (b) assessment, recognition, validation and certification; (c) planning, evaluation and financing. The meeting was seen by the delegates not only as a chance to improve the profile of adult education and an opportunity to learn from the innovative examples provided by different countries, but also as an opportunity to improve adult learning policies and undertake pilot projects and feasibility studies on a South-South basis. The first concrete result of the meeting is the dissemination of these four models for the development of a new Adult Basic Education Programme (ABEP) in Botswana and during the high-profile biennale meeting of African Ministers of Education in Gabon (Feb-March 2006). UIE will bring out a joint CONEVyT/INEA-UIE publication containing the revised contributions. The Mexico meeting set the tone for enlarging the coverage and integrating more countries in an even broader South-South policy dialogue on quality education for adults and young people. The second generation of dissemination of outstanding innovations will include China, Thailand and Namibia, among others.

Contact: Madhu Singh

Training of Adult Educators through Distance Learning

As part of the CONFINTEA V programme on monitoring adult education, one of UIE’s priorities is to ensure that there are enough well-prepared adult educators to develop and implement high-quality programmes that will have an impact on human and socio-economic development. UIE has undertaken extensive studies on the state of the art of adult educators' training internationally. The Institute is now decentralising the implementation through strengthening the national training of adult educators. One of these national consultations was organised in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning's Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi. In January 2005, more than 30 experts from numerous national institutions (Ministry of Education, State Resource Centres, NGOs, Universities and Open Learning schools) participated in a two-day national consultation to exchange information, views and experiences, as well as discuss strategies to address the professional development of grassroots workers and the Preraks – the adult educators and facilitators of the National Literacy Mission of India who are responsible for setting up and running the Continuing Education Centres. The outcome has been the development of a curriculum using open and distance learning in close partnership with the State Resource Centres in four Indian States, namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. The curriculum design has taken into account the duties and responsibilities of the Preraks and incorporates the results of the need-based assessment exercises of the State Resource Centres. Modules will be developed around development and livelihood themes, mobilisation strategies, and guidelines on how to develop partnerships with stakeholders such as banks and financing institutions.

Contact: Madhu Singh

International Adult Learners Week

The goal of International Adult Learners Week is to sustain and enlarge the worldwide cooperation among national learning festivals as a contribution to building lifelong learning cultures and societies. It also seeks to give new impetus to the learning-festivals movement by highlighting advocacy and mobilization at the crossroads of the CONFINTEA V Agenda, Education for All and the United Nations Literacy Decade.

Following the International Adult Learners Week commemoration and embedded forum for policy dialogue in September 2004 in Cape Town, South Africa, the Ministry of Education and Research of Norway is hosting the 2005 International ALW commemoration on 24 – 26 October this year, in conjunction with their national Adult Learners Week.

The theme chosen for this event is “Education for All in an Era of Increasing Mobility: The Implications for Adult Learning”. It aims to provide a forum for exchange, policy dialogue and advocacy on the importance of adult and lifelong learning. Mobility will serve as the overall background against which the role of adult learning will be examined both through the lenses of the EFA agenda – with a focus on life skills – and from the perspective of increasing participation and involvement in the sense of the CONFINTEA framework.

The regional European Adult Learners Week network (IntALWinE), financed by the European Commission, will continue its activities along two lines: the mobilizing of learners and the technical backstopping of learning festivals. Following the first regional forum for adult learners, the same group of adult learners joined a study tour in May on the occasion of UK’s Adult Learners Week. The tour followed up on capacity-building and multiplying effects already achieved last year. The learners met with award-winning learners, both centrally and in two different local regions, talked with learners’ campaign experts, and explored the possibilities both for initiating national forums in their own countries and for consolidating the trans-national forum as a permanent advocacy mechanism. A core group was set up at the end of the tour as the driving force behind a more consolidated European network of adult learners. In parallel, a publication illustrating the experiences and aspirations of learners from 15 different countries (“I did it my way. Journeys of Learning in Europe”) was produced and widely distributed during the UK Adult Learners Week as well as in the partner countries of the network. While the bulk of the first half year of 2005 was dedicated to the mobilization of learners, materials useful for the technical backstopping and assessment of learning festivals was also collected: good and bad practices in implementing a learning festival, cooperation models (with media, decision-makers, providers, sponsors) and evaluation strategies. These will be posted on a publicly accessible data bank (web-based). A working meeting of the network in June (Reykjavik, Iceland) was used to review these activities and to tighten the planning for the remaining tasks (assessment, policy recommendations, final publication, wrap up of formal requirements for the European Commission).

More

Contact: Bettina Bochynek

Global Monitoring Report on EFA: Contributions Regarding Literacy, Non-formal Education, Adult and Lifelong Learning

UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All defines annually on a worldwide scale progress made towards the implementation of the Dakar Framework for Action with its aim of achieving six concrete targets in education by the year 2015. UIE’s role in the preparation of this study is to employ its knowledge base along with its networks and partnerships in order to collect the relevant data and produce reports affording a comprehensive picture of activities undertaken in the areas of the Institute’s expertise and mandate (literacy, non-formal education, and adult and lifelong learning). Special attention is given to the involvement of non-governmental and civil-society organizations such as the International Council of Adult Education in the EFA monitoring process and the channelling of information through them. UIE gathers the needed information in cooperation with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNESCO’s Monitoring Report Team.

In preparation for the 2006 report focusing on literacy, UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report Team commissioned a series of background papers from UIE. Eight papers on the following topics were prepared by UIE: Literacy in Conflict Situations; Literacy in Botswana; Nicaragua's Literacy Campaign; Literacy for Special Target Groups; Libraries and the Literacy Environment; Literacy, HIV/AIDS and Gender; Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation in Literacy Programmes; and Literacy and Mother Tongue. The papers will inform the Global Monitoring Report on recent developments in UIE's fields of specialization by taking advantage of UIE's ongoing research activities. They will be made available to the public on the Monitoring Report Team's website by November 2005. The Institute provided substantive input (a consolidated collective response prepared by UIE's professional staff) to the UNESCO internal consultation on the report outline organized in February 2005.

Contact: Werner Mauch

Indigenous Adult Education in Latin America: International Survey of Adult Education for Indigenous Peoples

UIE is providing thematic continuity to indigenous adult education in partnership with the Training Programme in Intercultural Bilingual Education for the Andean Countries, PROEIB Andes, the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and OREALC. As a follow-up action to the publication of the updated country studies on adult learning for indigenous peoples conducted in five Latin American countries and in light of the upcoming CONFINTEA VI, UIE in partnership with OREALC and PROEIB Andes proposed to organize a Latin American Observatory on Indigenous Youth and Adult Education. This project, which was formulated in a regional seminar last year, intends to begin work in five countries with a major indigenous presence, progressively opening up and involving others with fewer indigenous peoples. There is a manifest interest shown by countries on other continents to take part in the Observatory. The Observatory will mainly focus on literacy which is culturally and linguistically appropriate for indigenous youth and adults. OREALC is currently trying to find the necessary funds for a kick-off of the planned activities at country and regional level. In each of the participating countries project partners are also trying to raise funds.

Contact: Ulrike Hanemann

Reinforcing National Capacity to Evaluate NFE and Literacy Programmes for Young People and Adults

As a contribution to the UNESCO Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), UIE is starting a project to enhance the impacts of the NFE and literacy programmes in African countries with in-built evaluation systems. This year, situation analysis of strategies, approaches and case studies of programme evaluation will be undertaken in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and Uganda. Cross-national workshops will review and analyse these country analyses and draft a comprehensive conceptual framework. Using the framework as a guide, the follow-up consultations in each country will develop guidelines and long-term national action plans for developing comprehensive evaluation systems for NFE and literacy programmes. UIE, in collaboration with field offices, will support the preparation of these papers and organisation of national consultation seminars. The Institute will collect innovative practical examples of evaluation in four areas: learner evaluation, curriculum evaluation, progress monitoring and impact evaluation. The first cycle is supported by UNESCO extra-budgetary funding for EFA. Further financial support will be needed to establish well-functioning, comprehensive monitoring and evaluation systems, thereby building a culture of improving both policies and practices in literacy based on informed decisions.

Contact: Rika Yorozu

Lifelong Learning and Social Exclusion: Prisoners

Education in prison offers inmates not merely a vocational programme, but moreover a means of reconciliation with education and learning. At the same time, it can enrich the interrelation of learning and community (other inmates, family, social environment).

UIE has taken an active role in two projects financed by the European Union. The first has to do with establishing a European network for taking stock of legislation as well as human resources and materials dedicated to this work. Some working groups are dwelling on the following problem areas: training of trainers and guards, obstacles to education, role of families, basic education, non-formal education, vocational training, health education.

The second project has involved several European countries as well as the International Council on Adult Education, the Colegio Tlaxcala (Mexico) and Crisalida (a Brazilian non-governmental organization). A meeting in Florianópolis, Brazil, in June 2003 formulated proposals for educational materials specifically for migrants and young adults in prison. The brochure, with some examples, is available from UIE.

In 2005, the first phase of the European Network will end. The international report on education in prison, a book on the dimensions of education in prison and some brochures (on the role of adult educators, needs of inmates, the role of families, non-formal education) will be prepared for publication.

Contact: Marc de Maeyer