UNESCO Asia and Pacific Bureau for Education announces 2nd Asia-Pacific Regional Education Minister’s Conference (APREMC-II)

 SDG 4 Education 2030 Coordination and Monitoring in Asia-Pacific, 5 – 7 June 2022, Bangkok

The UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok), the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office, and the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia are jointly organizing the 2nd Asia-Pacific Regional Education Minister’s Conference (APREMC-II) in Bangkok, from 5 through 7 June 2022. The event will be co-hosted by the Thailand Ministry of Education, with generous support provided by the Ministry of Education, Cultures, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.

APREMC-II’s objective is to take stock of, and analyze progress made, to date, in the Asia-Pacific region towards achieving the SDG 4 goals since the adoption by the United Nations of the SDG 2030 Agenda in 2015, and to jointly reflect on, and generate recommendations for an effective educational recovery and transformation, with ‘learning for all’ as a central principle. APREMC-II is the follow-up edition of the high-level 2014 Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC), which discussed issues, challenges and priorities for education in the region beyond 2015, and developed Asia-Pacific regional recommendations for the post-2015 global education agenda. 

APREMC-II is also partly positioned as a follow-up to the 2021 Global Education Meeting (GEM) debates, the July session’s outcome document of which invited UNESCO to strengthen the ‘linkages in the global regional-country levels of coordination within the Global Education Cooperation Mechanism (GCM)’, and to take forward the commitments made in the Paris Declaration: Call for Action at the regional level. 

APREMC-II will provide a platform for ministers of the 46 Member States of UNESCO from the Asia-Pacific region and other education stakeholders to discuss regional and sub-regional issues, challenges and priorities for action beyond COVID-19-related responses, as well as how to promote an acceleration of progress towards attaining the SDG 4 goals in the region. Its outcomes could also constitute part of the regional contribution to the SDG 4 High-Level Steering Committee (HLSC), which will be convened in July 2022.

Objectives

The overall aim of APREMC- II is to reflect and agree on how to achieve education/learning recovery, and at the same time how to strengthen and transform education systems to become more equitable, inclusive, responsive, relevant and resilient in to better delivering better on the SDG4 commitments. The specific objectives are to:

• Take stock and reflect on the first 7 years of progress towards SDG4-Education 2030 in Asia and the Pacific;
• Identify challenges in progressing towards SDG 4 in the region, with a focus on the impact of COVID-19 and COVID-19 responses;
• Share and learn from effective policies, practices and innovations for education recovery and system transformation;
• Identify, and agree on priority areas of action and strategies, and key steps going forward for education/learning recovery and system transformation beyond COVID-19,so as to to accelerate SDG 4 implementation in the region and generate recommendations for action.

Date and Location

5 through 7 June 2022; hybrid format, on site in Bangkok and virtual via Microsoft Teams platform; attendance by invitation only.

Participation

With support provided by the Japanese Funds-in-Trust; Ministry of Education Thailand; UNICEF and the UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok), approximately 250–300 key stakeholders will be invited from relevant organizations within and outside the Asia-Pacific region.

Invited guests will include government officials, non-governmental organizations, and civil society organizations in Asia and the Pacific responsible for SDG 4 planning, monitoring and statistics. In particular, Director-General (DG) and technical-level officials, including Education Management and Information Systems (EMIS) officials of regional Ministries of Education (MoE) and national SDG 4 coordinators will be invited.

Organizers

The meeting is organized by the Ministry of Education Thailand, UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok), UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (UNICEF EAPRO), and UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia.

For more information: apmed2030@unesco.org