I’ve just returned from the sixth annual WISE 2014, a Summit organized by the Qatar Foundation and supported by the former first lady of Qatar, HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. The Summit brings together individuals from both the private and public sector to explore innovative solutions to address the global challenges facing education. The panelists and speakers included:
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Tony Wagner, Harvard Innovation Lab
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Graca Machel, Founder of the Graca Machel Trust
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Thomas Gass, UN Asst Secy Gen for Policy Coordinator and Inter-Agency Affairs
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Hans d’Orville, UNESCO Asst Dir Gen for Strategic Planning
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Henry Wang, Center for China and Globalization
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Claire Ortiz, Social Innovation Manager, Twitter
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Naif Al-Mutawa, Creator, The 99
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Alice Albright, CEO, Global Partnership for Education
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Laila Bokhari, State Secy in the office of PM, Norway
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Ayesha Bah Diallo, Chair, Network for Education for All, Africa (former minister of education, Guinea)
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Ken Donkoh, Co-founder, Omega Schools, Ghana
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Prachi Srivastava, Associate Prof, School of International Development and Global Studies, Univ of Ottawa (Canada)
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Mwangi Kimenyi, Sr. Fellow and Director, Africa Growth Initiative, The Brookings Institution (Kenya)
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Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder, Teach for All
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Sister Nuria Miro, Principal, Col-legi Montserrat, Spain
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Suad Abdirashi, Kukama Refugee Camp, Somalia
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Safeena Husain, founder, Educate Girls
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Sharath Jeevan, Founder and CEO, STIR Education
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Vijay Chadda, CEO, Bharti Foundation
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Rukmini Banerji, Co-founder and Director, Pratham, ASER, India
The Summit asked world leaders about their political will to resolve the global challenges facing education and the implementation of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, highlighted the need for urgent action to bring education to all children in the world, and explored innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to address the challenges.
Some of my Summit takeaways:
Broad Shifts
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We are no longer in the knowledge economy. We are in an innovation economy. Changing how we educate children is an urgent necessity.
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Teacher preparation needs disruption.
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Empathy has become an essential life skill. How are we cultivating and developing this skill?
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Human lives are far more than the economic imperatives of innovation. Creativity seems to be too much about the economy, about jobs. Shift in narrative required – from focus on economics to humanity, from jobs to human spirit. Shift in vocabulary – people are more than ‘markets’ – human spirit, spirituality, intellectual. Cultivate creativity for all aspects of our lives. To help us be more free and fulfilled individuals in our lives.
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Need to shift the vocabulary – Instead of using ‘Creativity’, use ‘Creative Problem-Solving’ to get the attention of public institutions.
Education Post-2015: The Unfinished Agenda
The implementation of the UN’s Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) continue to be a matter of debate. In 2000, education was declared as one of the MDGs. Almost 15 years later, progress towards achievement of this goal seems to be abysmal.
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Through the MDGs, the world pledged to secure education for all by 2015.
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The statistics are overwhelming:
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250 million kids – unable to read and write after four years of schooling
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Across Africa, Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, 58 million children are without primary education. 55% of the children affected are girls
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Reasons include conflicts, poverty, disabled, nomadic children, and global epidemics.
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Effect of conflict on children
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Currently there are 8 conflict zones in the world
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Number of children affected or out of school due to conflict is going up
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Classrooms are co-opted for refugees who are displaced
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Girls are adversely affected – the sexual violence that accompanies conflict
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We need to devise specific alternative means to bring these children into schooling
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In addition to the 58 million children without primary education, 70 million youth who are illiterate, have to be brought into the education system.
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Putting children in school is the only solution to beat the cycle of poverty
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Where’s the political will to make concerted efforts for change? This cannot be just be a UN problem. Countries have to make meaningful, visible, and impactful national efforts. At the national level – fix and adjust policies to address the challenge. Synergy can be created by connecting each country’s national efforts with a regional effort. This in turn can become an impactful global effort.
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There is a global financing gap for primary education. Cost of not making education investments are enormous. By 2020, there is a projected deficit of 80 million jobs globally; this is a breeding ground for extremism. The world is currently spending upwards of 1.3 billion dollars a month on fighting extremism.
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The world has enough money to resolve this. The priorities are not in the right place. Think about the amount of money that is being spent on wars.
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$ 26 billion a year is required to close the gap. This is equivalent to 6 ⅔ days (less than a week) of global military spending. (UNESCO, 2011) Where’s the political will to address the challenge?
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The world is in danger of losing progress; Donor financing is going down. Aid to education has gone down by 5% a year since 2009.
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The UN is drafting SDGs or Sustainable Development Goals for 2016 to 2030. Education for all must be made the top target of SDGs. The SDGs need a finance goal linked to education – to address the ways in which domestic country budgets will allocate for education. Commitment to education should ideally be 6% of a country’s domestic budget
LCPS – Low Cost Private Schools
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There is a need to move from altruistic reasons for the existence of schools to open the space to creative problem solving and entrepreneurship that can help address the urgent challenges in education.
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Squatter communities all over the developing world have no recognition by government. Hence they have no schools and no government spending on education.
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Abolition of fees can result in increase in school enrollment. Low fees vs low cost – In India, 350 million people are living on a mean of 90 cents a day; 60 cents a day schooling is not affordable!
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Public schools are a failure of governance.
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Some ways in which the challenges can be addressed:
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hiring local teachers from within the community where a school is located.
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providing ongoing PD as opposed to the one time PD that is usually available.
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use teacher observation as a way to provide formative feedback
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create and empower parent-teacher associations and increase community engagement
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Monitoring of education quality is not happening, and wherever it is, it’s shoddy and not focused on improving learning for children.
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Neutralize inspectorates of education
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Identify what good data looks like to define ‘quality’
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Define accountability measures
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Explore ways to improve school governance models – reform inspectorates; grow active engagement of parents
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Design and create activity based curriculum – with a tech component (e.g. School in a box, 360 Schools)
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Involve the private sector to help improve public schools (e.g. Rishi Valley model)
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Omega Schools in Ghana are a good example of how to bring education to all. It is a means of extending education for those who cannot afford it.
This Summit has placed several provocations in front of us. How we respond to these will greatly impact our world’s future.