For this week’s blog assignment, I visited the UNESCO website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/.

  • Prior to this week, I was not quite aware of this organization’s existence through the United Nations. The website provided an array of information, and I first appreciated learning about the missions/goals of the organization:
  • -provide international leadership to create learning societies with educational opportunities for all populations.
  • -provide expertise and foster partnerships to strengthen national educational leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality education for all.
  • -work as an intellectual leader, an honest broker and clearing house for ideas, propelling both countries and the international community to accelerate progress towards these goals.

-facilitate the development of partnerships and monitors progress, in particular by publishing an annual Global Monitoring Report that tracks the achievements of countries and the international community towards the six Education for All goals.

Since this week was spent discussing professionalism, professional growth, and further education, I decided to investigate the area of the website dedicated to The UNESCO Institute for LifeLong Learning (http://www.uil.unesco.org), which promotes life long learning among the populations with whom they work. While reviewing this area, three highlights I found include the following:

  1. “Germany aims to raise the literacy and numeracy skills of at least 5 million of its 7. 5 million adults with low literacy levels within the next 15 years. At the same time, the country will promote guidance and counselling services, to help achieve its aim. This initiative is entailed in a resolution adopted at the 75th General Assembly of the German Commission for UNESCO in mid-September. This initiative is a big step towards achieving ‘inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all’ as stated in Goal 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations General Assembly adopted the SDGs in September, 2015 to guide the global development agenda for the next 15 years.

Additionally, the German resolution aims to promote the recognition schemes of non-formal and informal learning and to increase inclusive education in formal and non-formal settings.”

  1. “Approximately 10 million people without literacy, numeracy and basic skills in Afghanistan will benefit from a newly adopted curriculum framework for youth and adult literacy and basic education. The new curriculum was endorsed at a 3-day validation workshop in Kabul in late November 2015, which brought together more than 100 stakeholders. The participants, including two CONFINTEA scholars, who spent their scholarship at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) to develop this framework, signed a final statement which also acknowledges the crucial role UIL has played in developing the curriculum. H.E. Hanif Balkhi, Minister of Education, and H.E. Mohammad Azim Karbalai, Deputy Minister of Education for Literacy, endorsed the new framework as one that would improve the quality of literacy provision in the country.

Non-governmental education providers and literacy managers from various provinces in the country gave feedback and shared their experience to further enrich the framework. This new curriculum framework allows for flexible programme design and delivery that can be adjusted to diverse target groups and contexts. Additionally, it provides guidance to curriculum and learning material developers with regard to literacy and numeracy competency levels that are equivalent to those acquired in formal education. The framework offers the possibility for learners to obtain recognized certificates as it is aligned with the Afghanistan National Qualifications Framework.

UIL has played a crucial role in constant provision of guidance and support that has led to the development of this new Curriculum Framework. The workshop was co-organized by UNESCO Kabul and the Deputy Ministry for Literacy Education (DMoEL).

With financial support from the governments of Finland, Japan and Sweden, UNESCO Kabul is implementing the third phase of the Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA 3) project, which aims to reach 630,000 adult learners between 2014 and 2016. With the newly adopted framework as a basis, learning materials for the Basic General Literacy (BGL) programme will soon be developed. UIL continues to provide technical assistance to this next step of the programme.”

– See more at: http://www.uil.unesco.org/literacy-and-basic-skills/capacity-development/new-literacy-and-numeracy-curriculum-framework#sthash.Tgd4OqgU.dpuf

 

  1. “Literacy and numeracy are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development yet estimates show that there are 757 million adults, including 115 million youth, who cannot read or write a simple sentence and two-thirds of them are women.

UNESCO and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) is holding a consultation meeting at the Organization’s Headquarters in Paris on 26 February 2016 to discuss the establishment of a Global Alliance for Literacy (GAL) within the framework of lifelong learning.

‘The Global Alliance for Literacy is an ambitious attempt to make the major stakeholders work together to pull in the same direction to better support countries to achieve better,’ said Arne Carlsen, Director UIL.

The meeting will seek the views of Member States on the proposed alliance, which aims to help Member States achieve the literacy-related target of the Education 2030 Framework for Action. Sustainable Development Goal 4 seeks to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” while Target 4.6 aims by 2030 to “ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.”

The alliance will promote literacy as a foundation of lifelong learning, focusing on the innovative use of technology and the establishment of connections with the other Sustainable Development Goals.

At its 68th session (2013), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) expressed deep concern that the issue of literacy may not be sufficiently high on national agendas and recognized the importance of national programmes and measures to promote literacy worldwide. UNESCO was asked to strengthen its coordinating and catalyzing role.

The UNGA also encouraged UNESCO to continue consulting with Member States and development partners in order to elaborate a literacy vision and agenda for the years following the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003–2012).

In its 37th Session (2013), UNESCO’s General Conference resolved ‘to continue consultations with Member States and development partners in order to put in place a multi-stakeholder partnership for literacy that would ensure long-term global literacy efforts’.

Against this backdrop more than 100 UN and government representatives, donors, national and international non-governmental organizations, representatives of the private sector and experts from thirty-four countries gave their support to the proposal to create a GAL within the framework of lifelong learning.

– See more at: http://www.uil.unesco.org/literacy-and-basic-skills/repositioning-literacy-meet-2030-education-agenda-targets#sthash.TOFCh8CF.dpuf”