Education Minister Naledi Pandor enjoyed the honour of hosting the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers held in Cape Town in December last year.
This triennial gathering brings together education ministers from the 53 Commonwealth member states, mostly from impoverished countries, to share ideas and perspectives on how to deal with the challenges facing education.
While the conference addressed new issues, ministers re-affirmed their positions and commitments to speedily implement resolutions adopted at the last meeting held three years ago in Edinburgh.
Some of the issues discussed included, among others: the thorny issue of teacher recruitment by the rich North countries; the continuing discrimination against girl learners; the growing negative impact of HIV/Aids on education; and the lack of resource capacity by some countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals before the targeted 2015.
The conference also inaugurated Good Practice Awards to recognise worthy educational projects within the commonwealth countries.
It was mentioned that there are more than 30-million Commonwealth children still not in primary school and that the challenge facing the ministers is how to get them back into the education system.
The other important development of the conference was the parallel sessions of stakeholders (comprising business and NGO sectors), youth and teachers’ forums.
The idea was to afford these forums an opportunity to deliberate on issues affecting their sectors and then forward their inputs to the ministers to include in their plans of action.
Held under the theme ‘Access to quality education: for the good of all”, the conference was also addressed by various eminent speakers including Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, Graca Machel, Blade Nzimande and Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon.
Education goals
Some of the key resolutions adopted at the conference included:
Speeding up the attainment of universal primary education and assisting countries battling to achieve this goal.
Ending gender disparities in schools.
Strengthening the education sector’s fight against HIV/Aids.
Ensuring professional teacher development and devising strategies to get more young people to join the teaching profession.
Having strong collaboration with partner agencies, the non-state sector and civil society organisations for the good of all.
Accelerating the use of distance learning to overcome resource and socio-economic barriers.
Reviewing the implementation of the Commonwealth teacher recruitment protocol and report at the next conference.