The Incheon declaration is a declaration on education adopted at the World Education Forum in Incheon, South Korea on 15 May 2015. [1] It is the logical continuation of the Education For All (EFA) movement and the Millennium Development Goals on Education, [2] and many of its goals were based on a review of progress made since the 2000 World Education Forum in Dakar. [3] [4]
In keeping with its overall goal of ensuring education for all, the Incheon Declaration emphasizes several different types of equality. It focused on equal opportunity as well as the position that students' views must also be taken into consideration. [5] In addition, emphasis is placed on ensuring that cost and discrimination do not prevent people from pursuing and receiving quality education. Gender equality is specifically mentioned as an important aspect of an educational system [6] while diversity is not considered a problem but a resource. [5]
The signatories of the Incheon Declaration also agreed to make improvements in educational outcomes. For instance, it established its commitment "to ensuring that all youth and adults, especially girls and women, achieve relevant and recognized functional literacy and numeracy proficiency levels." [7] Outcome goals also include having developed countries reaching 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) for official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries. [4]
Another key recommendation contained in the Incheon Declaration regards funding for education. The signatories are urged to commit 4-6% of their Gross domestic product or 15-20% of their public expenditures to improving the status of education. [6]
The Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted at Incheon in May 2015, recognises lifelong learning for all as one of the underpinning principles of this new vision, stating that "all age groups, including adults, should have opportunities to learn and continue learning." The framework, which reaffirmed the commitments outlined in the Education for All initiative, became part of the Sustainable Development Goals as SDG4 and was adopted by the United Nations in September of the same year. [8] Those who signed onto the declaration committed to provide twelve years of primary and secondary education paid for by the public. Further, nine of those years will be compulsory. [4] It also calls on countries to "develop policies and programmes for the provision of quality distance learning in tertiary education, with appropriate financing and use of technology, including the Internet, massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other modalities that meet accepted quality standards to improve access." [9]
Between 2012 and 2019, expenditure per student in OECD countries increased by an average rate of 1.6% per year. [10] Nonetheless, it was estimated that in 2018, on average, member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) were spending 11% of their public budgets on education, [11] compared to the 15-20% recommended by the Incheon declaration. About one third of the countries missed both of the benchmarks set out in the declaration. [2]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, education budgets and official aid program budgets for education decreased. UNESCO estimates that educational shutdowns during the pandemic affected nearly 1.6 billion students: 94% of the student population and one-fifth of the global population. Closures are estimated to have lasted for an average of 41 weeks (10.3 months). They have had significant negative effects on student learning, which are predicted to have substantial long-term effects on both education and earnings. The pandemic has disproportionately affected already disadvantaged students. Countries and governments must prioritize education to mitigate the effects of such disruptions. [2] [12] [13]
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0( license statement/permission ). Text taken from Making Sense of MOOCs: A Guide for Policy-Makers in Developing Countries , 13, Patru, Mariana; Balaji, Venkataraman, UNESCO. UNESCO.
Education policy consists of the principles and policy decisions that influence the field of education, as well as the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems. Education governance may be shared between the local, state, and federal government at varying levels. Some analysts see education policy in terms of social engineering.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.
International education refers to a dynamic concept that involves a journey or movement of people, minds, or ideas across political and cultural frontiers. It is facilitated by the globalization phenomenon, which increasingly erases the constraints of geography on economic, social, and cultural arrangements. The concept involves a broad range of learning, for example, formal education and informal learning. It could also involve a reorientation of academic outlook such as the pursuit of "worldmindedness" as a goal so that a school or its academic focus is considered international. For example, the National Association of State Universities prescribes the adoption of "proper education" that reflects the full range of international, social, political, cultural, and economic dialogue. International educators are responsible for "designing, managing, and facilitating programs and activities that help participants to appropriately, effectively, and ethically engage in interactions with culturally diverse people and ideas."
The history of education in Africa can be roughly divided into pre- and post- colonial periods. Since the introduction of formal education to Africa by European colonists, African education, particularly in West and Central Africa, is characterised by both traditional African teachings and European-style schooling systems. The state of education reflects not only the effects of colonialism, but instability resulting from and exacerbated by armed conflicts in many regions of Africa as well as fallout from humanitarian crises such as famine, lack of drinking water, and outbreaks of diseases such as malaria and Ebola, among others. Although the quality of education and the quantity of well-equipped schools and teachers has steadily increased since the onset of the colonial period, there are still numerous inequalities evident in the existing educational systems based on region, economic status, and gender.
The right to education has been recognized as a human right in a number of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which recognizes a right to free, primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all with the progressive introduction of free secondary education, as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education. In 2021, 171 states were parties to the Covenant.
Non-formal learning includes various structured learning situations which do not either have the level of curriculum, syllabus, accreditation and certification associated with 'formal learning', but have more structure than that associated with 'informal learning', which typically take place naturally and spontaneously as part of other activities. These form the three styles of learning recognised and supported by the OECD.
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the statistical office of UNESCO and is the UN depository for cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication.
A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".
Open educational resources (OER) are learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER policies are adopted by governments, institutions or organisations in support of the creation and use of open content, specifically open educational resources (OER), and related open educational practices.
Qian Tang has been the Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO since April 2010.
TVE refers to all forms and levels of education and which provide knowledge and skills related to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life through formal, non-formal and informal learning methods in both school-based and work-based learning contexts.To achieve its aims and purposes, TVE focuses on the learning and mastery of specialized techniques and the scientific principles underlying those techniques, as well as general knowledge, skills and values.
A qualifications framework is a formalized structure in which learning level descriptors and qualifications are used in order to understand learning outcomes. This allows for the ability to develop, assess and improve quality education in a number of contexts. Qualifications frameworks are typically found at the national, regional, and international level.
Online credentials for learning are digital credentials that are offered in place of traditional paper credentials for a skill or educational achievement. They are directly linked to the accelerated development of internet communication technologies, the development of digital badges, electronic passports and massive open online courses (MOOCs).
Open Educational Practices in Australia refers to the development, implementation and use of Open educational resources (OER), open access, open learning design, open policies, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to open up education in Australia.
Open educational resources in Canada are the various initiatives related to open education, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogies (OEP), open educational practices (OEP), and open scholarship that are established nationally and provincially across Canadian K-12 and higher education sectors, and where Canadian based inititatives extend to international collaborations.
The Qingdao Declaration is a document that provides UN Member States with policy recommendations for harnessing the power of ICT to address current educational challenges, and to ensure equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all. It was the key output of the International Conference on ICT and Post-2015 Education, which took place 23–25 May 2015 in Qingdao, People's Republic of China. The conference was organized by UNESCO, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected educational systems across the world. The number of cases of COVID-19 started to rise in March 2020 and many educational institutions and universities underwent closure. Most countries decided to temporarily close educational institutions in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. UNESCO estimates that at the height of the closures in April 2020, national educational shutdowns affected nearly 1.6 billion students in 200 countries: 94% of the student population and one-fifth of the global population. Closures are estimated to have lasted for an average of 41 weeks. They have had significant negative effects on student learning, which are predicted to have substantial long-term implications for both education and earnings. During the pandemic, education budgets and official aid program budgets for education have decreased.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 is about quality education and is among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in September 2015. The full title of SDG 4 is "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
The Survey of Teachers in Pre-Primary Education (STEPP) is the first international survey for low-and-middle-income countries designed to collect information that is known to affect the quality of pre-primary education from pre-primary teachers and centre heads. The collected information concerns training and professional development, pedagogical and professional practices, working conditions and job satisfaction, and characteristics of pre-primary personnel and the settings in which they work.
The learning crisis or global learning crisis is a term describing the fact that, despite a large increase in access to schooling, learning outcomes remain poor, especially in developing countries. Worldwide, millions of children who attend school do not acquire basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, and many more are far behind age-appropriate expectations in their national curricula. Proponents argue that this crisis needs to be addressed due to the importance of education in fostering children's development, social mobility, and subsequent opportunities.
By mid-April 2020, 94 per cent of learners worldwide were affected by the pandemic, representing 1.58 billion children and youth, from pre-primary to higher education, in 200 countries.