INDEX [] · Web viewOEA/Ser.C/VI.5.5. 24-25 September, 2001 1st November, 2001. Punta del Este, Uruguay Original: Spanish. FINAL REPORT. INDEX. Background. P. 3. Participants. P

ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI)

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.C/VI.5.524-25 September, 2001 1st November, 2001Punta del Este, Uruguay Original: Spanish

FINAL REPORT

INDEX

I. Background P. 3

II. Participants P. 3

III. Evolution of the Meeting P. 4

A. Preparatory Session P. 4

B. Inaugural Session P. 4

C. First Plenary Session P. 5

(i) Approval of the Agenda P. 5

(ii) Analytical Report about the Education Plan of Action of the Santiago Summit: Achievements and Challenges P. 5

(iii)Hemispheric Education Panorama within the Framework of the III Summit of the Americas P. 6

D. Second Plenary Session P. 7(i) Educational Priorities of the II Summit of the Americas.

Mechanisms for Horizontal Cooperation P. 7(ii) Connectivity at the Service of Human Development P. 9(iii) Institute for Connectivity in the Americas P. 10(iv) The Educational Portal of the Americas P. 10

E. Third Plenary Session P.

11(i) Financing Mechanisms P.

11(ii) Follow-up Mechanisms P.

12(iii) Participation of Civil Society in Education P.

12(iv) Adoption of Agreements P.

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F. Closing Session P. 14

IV. Declarations and Resolutions P. 15

Declaration of the Ministers of Education of the Americas P. 16

Declaration Against Violence P. 18

Resolutions passed:Follow-up Mechanisms P.

20Project Proposals on Education P.

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V. Appendices: Official DocumentsAppendix I: List of Participants P. 24Appendix II: Draft Agenda, Schedule and Annotated Agenda P. 33

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Appendix III: List of Official DocumentsP. 41

Appendix IV: Report analyzing the Santiago Summit Plan of Action on Education: Achievements and Challenges P. 43

Appendix V: Executive Summary of the Report on Regional Education Indicators (PRIE) P. 47Appendix VI:Horizontal Cooperation Mechanisms P.

65Appendix VII: The Educational Portal of the Americas

P. 77Appendix VIII: Opportunity areas for cooperation with International Agencies P.

89Appendix IX: Toward International Cooperation in Education for the Integration of the

Americas P. 93

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FINAL REPORT OF THE II MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION

I. BACKGROUND

The Second Meeting of Ministers of Education within the framework of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI) was convened in Punta del Este, Uruguay on the 24th and 25th of September 2001. The Heads of State and Government entrusted the organization of the Ministers of Education meeting to the Organization of American States with the explicit objective to identify and establish appropriate hemispheric mechanisms in order to guarantee the implementation the educative initiatives of the Plan of Action of the II Summit of the Americas and to continue promoting measures in accordance to the identified priorities of the Summit’s of Santiago de Chile and Miami.

The General Assembly of the Organization of American States, in its thirty-first period of sessions, instructed, through the Resolution AG/ Res.1810 (XXXI-O/01), to convene the II Meeting of Ministers of Education.

In preparation for the Ministerial Meeting, five, sub-regional Meetings of Experts in Education were convened for the regions of Mercosur; the Andean Region; Central America, the Dominican Republic and Panama; North America and the Caribbean countries of Caricom. The purpose of these meetings was to share those “best practices” that the respective countries have identified for confronting the major education challenges, priorities and necessities.

Also, an Inter-Agency Education Meeting was convened in order to share strategies and identify common interests that respond to the previously mentioned priorities of the Quebec Plan of Action.

On the 9th and 10th of August 2001, the Mexican Secretary of Public Education – as cordinator of the Group of 11 – convened the Preparatory Meeting for the II Meeting of Ministers of Education. The expressed purpose of this meeting was to submit a draft agenda for the Meeting.

II. PARTICIPANTS

The LIST of Participants have been published as document CIDI/RME/doc.14/01 Rev 1/01, that appears in this document as Appendix 1.

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III. EVOLUTION OF THE MEETING

In compliance with Article 27 of the by-laws, the Meeting was composed of a Preparatory session, an inaugural session, three plenary sessions and a closing session.

A. Preparatory Session

Representatives from the present delegation carried out a preparatory session on the 24th of September, at 9:00 A.M., prior to the formal opening of the II Meeting. The Session was presided over by the host of the event, Dr. Mercader, Minister of Education and Culture of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay.

In the preparatory Session, Dr. Mercader was unanimously elected President of the II Meeting of Ministers of Education of CIDI. Mr. Guillermo Vargas Salazar, Minister of Education of Costa Rica was elected Vice-President.

B. Inaugural Session

The Inaugural Session took place on the 24th of September 2001. Dr. Jorge Batlle, President of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay and Dr. Cesar Gaviria, Secretary General of the Organization of American States made the opening remarks. The President of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay gave the opening speech. He emphasized the importance of of continental support for educational priorities, the need to put into effect the goals set in Quebec and create the conditions that will facilitate reaching these goals in every country.

Dr. César Gaviria, Secretary General of the OAS made mention of the education themes of the prior Summits of the Americas and recognized the contribution of the Group of 11 in giving purpose and direction to the meetings. Focusing on efforts that are multilateral in character as well as bilateral initiatives between Member States to solve pressing educational challenges, Dr. Gaviria, emphasized the tremendous challenge posed by globalization and its impact on education systems. He urged that spaces offered by the OAS be used for communication between countries. In this regard he supported the processes of horizontal cooperation and its goal to share successful experiences among countries so as to combat the persisting problems of equity, quality, exclusion and to professionalize education overall. He finished his speech by thanking Dr. Mercader, Minister of Education of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay for his support in carrying out the meeting.

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C. First Plenary Session

(i) Approval of the AgendaThe first plenary session took place on September 24th, 2001. Over the

course of the meeting decisions taken during the Preliminary Session were formalized. These decisions are detailed below:

(a)Election of the Governing Body for the MeetingDr. Antonio Mercader, Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic

of Uruguay Dr. Mercader was elected President of the II Meeting of Ministers of Education of CIDI. Mr. Guillermo Vargas Salazar, Minister of Education of Costa Rica was elected Vice-President.

(b)Agenda(c) Duration of the MeetingIt was decided to close the Second Meeting of Ministers of Education

within the context of CIDI upon completion of the Third Plenary Session, anticipated to be on the 25th of September 2001 at 2:00 p.m.

(d)Timetable for the presentation of proposalsSeptember 24, 2001 was agreed upon as the deadline for the

presentation of proposals for resolutions. (e)Participation of Observers and Special Invitees

(ii) Analytical Report about the Education Plan of Action of the Santiago: Achievements and Challenges

Sylvia Ortega Salazar, Under-Secretary of Educational Services for the Federal District of Mexico proceeded with the presentation of the Analysis of the Action Plan of the Summit of Santiago: Successes and Challenges. She began her presentation sharing population statistics from the region, placing special emphasis on the aspects of poverty, population dispersion, diversity and illiteracy.

Mexico, as the country coordinating the G-11, called on member countries to continue generating initiatives and education programs that respond to the New Lines of Action of Quebec. She presented a report on the commitments and advances that have been laid out in answer to the lines of action.

The delegate from Mexico then presented the written text of the project of the Resolution on Follow-up Mechanisms; which was discussed in the appropriate section of the agenda.

Ana Evelyn Jacir de Lovo, Minister of Education of El Salvador took the floor to announce the distribution of the document “Summit of the Americas: The Successes and Challenges of Central America” prepared by the Central American Educational and Cultural Coordinating Committee(CECC). This document details the assessment from Santiago to Quebec and expounds uponthe challenges and programs for each country in Central America in regard to the obligations of the Third Summit of the Americas.

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(iii) Hemispheric Education Panorama within the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas.

Dr. Mariana Aylwin, Minister of Education of Chile presented the Hemispheric Education Panorama within the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas. Her presentation pinpointed records and projections from the Regional Project of Educational Indicators (PRIE), started in August of 2000 and designed as a solution to one of the commitments of the Second Summit of the Americas. The Chilean Ministry of Education, in cooperation with UNESCO/OREALC, coordinates the project which, is financed by a group of international institutions and regional governments.

The Minister set forth the objectives and the components of the PRIE as well as the preliminary information that came from the analysis of the 25 comparable, education indicators. The process of constructing the indicators was carried-out through information that countries provided to UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics and other existing initiatives in the region.

The PRIE planned the strengthening of national systems of indicators; supporting countries with technical cooperation; disseminating reports to promote and evaluate the results of the adoption of policies. Dr. Aylwin concluded her presentation noting that it is necessary to give priority to the theme of inequality within the continent so that region can proceed forward together and in the same direction.

Dr. Ana Luisa Machado, Regional Director of Education for UNESCO/OREALC complemented Minister Aylwin’s report saying that it confirmed the importance of paying particular attention to the heterogeneity of the region. She also stressed the importance of coordination between all the various agencies in order to unite efforts and attend to the most urgent needs in the Americas.

Ministerial DialogueAfter the presentations there was a time for dialogue between the

ministers. The Ministers and Heads of Delegation from Canada, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Peru and Brazil addressed the group. The Ministers and Heads of Delegation joined together in congratulating Chile for its successful work on the Project of Regional Education Indicators. They recognized the PRIE as a tremendous advancement toward a reliable future continental profile and regional level summary of information about areas requiring the most urgent attention. In turn, they also reflected on the uses, benefits and opportunities that such information affords without de-emphasizing the importance of confronting the remaining challenges.

They emphasized PRIE’s important selection of indicators and the potential contribution this could make to the formulation of public policy. The Ministers and Heads of Delegation sought to incorporate information such as perceptions of the father as head of the family, domestic feedback

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on the international evaluations and information on the quality of educational output. They agreed that countries should share their experiences and pointed out that the benefits of horizontal cooperation could be served by forming a group of consultants to coordinate the dissemination of information.

Francois Legault, Minister of Education and Youth of Quebec, expressed interest in working with indicators for secondary and higher education. He discussed the experiences his province has had with such indicators and he offered to team up with Chile to assist with the work that country has already began.

The head of Delegation for Brazil spoke of the problems that emerge when comparing information due to methodological and conceptual difference in the collection of information in each country. She suggested the elaboration of a technical report with clarification and comments regarding the methodologies utilized in each country to gather data on population, financial circumstances and other components of the indicators, as that would help improve the reading of the information presented by PRIE. She recommended that over the medium or long term activities of horizontal cooperation be strengthened in order to advance in the comparison of methodologies and to arrive at common conceptualizations.

D. Second Plenary SessionThe Second Plenary Session took place 24th September, 2001

(i) Educational Priorities of the II Summit of the Americas. Mechanisms for horizontal cooperation

(a) Mechanisms of horizontal cooperation. Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs organized by Thematic Areas

Following the mandated of the Summit of the Americas at Quebec, Dr. Sofialeticia Morales Garza, Director of the Unit for Social Development and Education, addressed the importance of supporting specific mechanisms of horizontal cooperation among member countries through the OAS. An alternative that endorses this dynamic between countries is the compilation of national educational programs into a permanent portfolio that could be shared among member states. The report is published as the document CIDI/RME/doc. 6/01 (Anex VI..)

The educational priorities contained in the Plan of Action of the Quebec Summit have been organized into five thematic axis: (1) Equity and Quality; (2) Management, Decentralization, Social Participation, and Ongoing Teacher Professional Development; (3) Youth, Secondary Education, and Labor Skills Certification; (4) Higher Education, Science and Technology, Academic Mobility; and (5) New Technologies in Education.

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Dr. Morales indicated the need to rely upon a horizontal cooperation mechanism that could support the definition, systematization and transfer of exemplary experiences that respond to the above mentioned priorities among countries and sub-regions. Such a mechanism should address the educational needs of the continents, work towards a more equitable distribution of resources among the sub-regions and optimize the use of the technical, human and financial resources that exist throughout the region. Consequently, the Unit for Social Development and Education, in collaboration with the ministries of the member states, proposed the instrumentation of the horizontal cooperation mechanism based on the Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs. The Portfolio includes educational experiences implemented in the countries that have produced a positive outcome.

With regard to the financing of the project, she indicated that a permanent strategy open to all countries, depending on their needs and interests, would be the use of the Multilateral Special Fund of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (FEMCIDI) account destined to education.

Ministerial DialogueThe Canadian delegation reflected on the institutional characteristics of

their country. There is no central authority on education issues. In 1997 the Council of Education Ministries was created, granting responsibility for educational affairs to the provincial governments. The president of the council rotates every two years and is one of the current provincial ministers of education. The delegation indicated that it is very important for their country to participate in horizontal cooperation mechanism to achieve educational objectives put forth at the Summit. However, in the case of Canada the decision to join this effort must be made by each of the provinces as well. The delegation showed interest in sharing its country’s experiences of recent years and its most successful practices.

(b) Toward International cooperation in Education for the Integration of the AmericasDr. Noel McGinn presented his reflections on cooperation in education

in the Americas. He presented a conceptual framework and the historical process of the creation, production and diffusion of knowledge from the 19 th

century through present day.

He finished his presentation by posing three questions crucial to the understanding of the potential implementation of horizontal cooperation mechanisms:

What are the current obstacles for the promotion of horizontal cooperation?

Which mechanisms for dialogue would be most effective and feasible?

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How can the OAS support the efforts towards the implementation of horizontal cooperation mechanisms?

Ministerial DialogueMinisters and Heads of delegations from Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil,

El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay and Peru took the floor and spoke. Among other issues shared, they indicated the following:

The existence of obstacles that require identifying mechanisms to promote cooperation among countries;

The challenge posed by the integration of knowledge and the creation of teams coordinating policies from the different sectors of society and between countries to be able to compare models of knowledge production;

The need to identify innovations that already exist in the field of education, so that they may be shared and used to avoid new creation process to fight similar problems in different countries or regions. They agreed that the Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs in an excellent example of knowledge production and sharing;

The need to find paths for cooperation in order to enrich, through joint efforts, the production, transmission and adaptation of knowledge and of and education model and the improvement of communication to provide a channel for the transfer of knowledge.

The Ministers and Heads of Delegation reflected on the best ways to rationalize time and find the most efficient dynamics for political meetings on education and identify techniques that may help to confront these challenges. Suggestions were made on the need for networks of educators and students and the use of technology to establish a permanent contact between these two groups, the technical staff and the political sphere.

(ii) Connectivity at the service of human developmentDr. John Daniel, Director General of Education for UNESCO, introduced

the theme. He indicated that the intelligent use of technology is a challenge, since Dakar proposes that ministers of education should offer high quality, equitable and low cost education to all. Consequently, incorporating information technology into education spawns the concern to reduce costs, increase access, and deliver quality education. Dr. Daniel affirmed that technology can provide inclusion with quality. There are several successful examples that support this statement. For example, the Open Universities of the United Kingdom, India, Thailand and Alberta have, upon incorporating distance learning technology, increased coverage, reduced costs, enhanced interactive dynamics and teleconferences, and improved access to documents and museums. He pointed out that the determining factor for success in these endeavors is political support.

Ministerial Dialogue

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Concern was raised on how to deal with the inclusion and the best use of new technologies for primary education. At that education level, socialization is vital and it is therefore unrealistic to sit them in front of their computers while promoting independent and interactive activities. Television and radio educational programs can help. However, technology is a tool and not an end of itself; technology cannot be isolated from the rest of the curriculum. Finally, new technologies cannot replace human beings.

Dr. Francisco Piñón, Secretary General of the Ibero-American States Organization for Education, Science and Culture, added that the speeches delivered by the Secretary General of the OAS and the President of Uruguay informed attendees of the challenges that are present in the field of education. He said that cooperation has advanced, that meetings of ministers in the various forums are not the same and that each one of these are important in their own way. He emphasized the areas of opportunity that are opening up to all agencies, where there exist common agendas and the wish to combine efforts, such as those seen in the document presented at the meeting that lists the objectives of each of the international organization present at the meeting.

(iii) Institute for Connectivity in the AmericasDr. Federico S. Barone, Director of the International Development

Research Center (IDRC), noted that the Plan of Action 2001-2003 of the organization he represents incorporates the use of information and communication technology to develop networks, promote exchanges and bring governments and civil society’s efforts together. The Institute for Connectivity was created by Canada en April, 2001, responding to the Summit mandate to strengthen democracy, generate prosperity and promote the full development of human potential through the use of information and communication technologies. The Institute foresees its association with other institutions.

Dr. Barone reported that they are currently building associations through the search for partners who are developing specific connectivity strategies in the areas of education, health and environmental education. A regional network will be organized responding to local demands and with the presence of a sponsoring institution in each region (Canada and the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Andean Region, Brazil and Mercosur). They will enforce transparency and anticipate that this project will evolve into a hemispheric institution within the next three years, counting among its ranks a Board of Directors to offer support for the next Summit of the Americas, to be held in 2004. The Program will consider three areas of work: Innovation and Demonstration, Connectivity and Learning and Research.

(iv) The Educational Portal of the AmericasSecretary General, César Gaviria, presented the Educational Portal of

the Americas. This initiative of the Inter-American Agency for the Cooperation and Development (IACD) is being developed with the United

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States Fund for Cooperation, in order to respond to the connectivity mandate of the III Summit of the Americas.

Dr Carlos Paldao, Director of the Department of Information Technology for Human Development of the IADC, explained the possibilities and uses of the Portal. Dr Paldao described the Portal as an instrument that serves the democratization of information, with the goal of informing users about the different education opportunities being offered through distance learning methodologies. This instrument is a tool that seeks to expand the access to global knowledge, undertaking an active participation in the technological revolution. The Portal will also inform on the different programs and scholarships offered by the OAS, as well as provide information on the availability of other services, stimulus and strengthening programs prepared especially to address the demands and needs of the region.

At the end of the presentation, the Uruguayan Minister of Education, Dr Mercader, in his role as president of the Meeting, inaugurated the Portal.

E. Third Plenary SessionThe Second Plenary Session took place 25th September, 2001 following

the themes on the Agenda

(i) Financing mechanismsRepresentatives from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development

Bank and the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development exposed their views on the matter.

(a) World BankMr. Antonio Gomes Pereira, consultant for the World Bank, started his

presentation by enumerating the Bank’s priorities on the issues of quality, sustainable social investment and the Banks’ re-orientation of funds towards preventive strategies, increasing investment in early childhood education and kindergarten. He mentioned a number of projects undertaken by the organization in each of the five thematic themes that organize the Summit’s priorities on education. He finally ratified the matrix presented at the meeting that enumerates the international agencies’ priorities as a starting point to reflect on potential collaborative work.

(b) Inter-American Development BankMr. Ernesto Martínez, representative for the IDB in Uruguay, highlighted

the renewed interest of this organization on education issues. Providing an overview of the status of education in the region, he mentioned the increase in basic and secondary education coverage and the reduction of iliteracy. He pointed out the need to respond to other challenges, such as quality in education, the increase of the average years of attendance, the inequality of educational opportunities, the expansion of secondary education and life long learning. He added to these the need to improve teacher training, include ICT’s in the education system and increase civil society participation. The latter opens the discussion on the redefinition of the roles of

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international agencies and the state on the supply, provision and financing of educational services across the region.

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(c) The Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development

Mr. Alfonso Quiñones, Director of Politics for Cooperation at the Agency, shared with the audience the different mechanism being offered by the Agency to respond to the III Summit’s mandates. He mentioned the new Strategic Plan for Cooperation that will start running during the year 2002, and which incorporates the Summit mandates. The new plan will: (i) promote a stronger cooperation among the member states and with other agencies, (ii) include interaction with the private sector, (iii) support innovations across the region, (iv) create new and more attractive opportunities to maximize available resources, (v) reduce costs by sharing successful experiences through cooperation mechanisms, (vi) identify experts throughout the region, and (vii) support inter-agency cooperation efforts.

CIDI`s Multilateral Special Fund, FEMCIDI, could be used to co-finance cooperation activities and joint efforts with other agencies. The projects presented by the countries requesting for FEMCIDI funds will have to respond to the priorities enumerated at the Summit. The fund will also be aligned with the thematic areas and the Permanent Portfolio of Exemplary Programs previously presented.

(ii) Follow-up mechanismsMrs. Sylvia Ortega Salazar, under-secretary for Mexico City’s Education

Department, updated the audience on the activities of the Second Summit’s Follow-up Group. As the coordinating country of the Group, Mexico proposed a resolution on the follow-up mechanisms, (documento CIDI/RES 7).

Ministerial DialogueMinisters and heads of delegations from all the countries represented at

the meeting discussed the matter. They stated that the Summit’s follow-up requires dynamic mechanisms, led by a dynamic and sustainable entity with democratic procedures opened to the 34 member states. They agreed on giving Mexico de responsibility of preparing a project proposal for the creation of an Inter-American Education Commission that will support and strengthen the activities developed by the Group of the Eleven and will include the other member states.

(iii) Participation of Civil Society on Education

(a) Participation of citizenry: 20 experiencesRosa María Torres, international consultant on education, presented her

perspectives on civil society participation. The inclusion of different groups from society into the discussion and actions is every day more important and pertinent. However, she highlighted the need to redefine the role of civil society and the sectors it represents, as well as its relation with the State.

Supporting civil society organizations is crucial for the strengthening of democracy, modernization and governability. It is also important for a more

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efficient and sustainable implementation of development policies and programs. In terms of the definition of civil society she mentioned that:

Civil society is an heterogeneous and complex composition, formed by multiple organizations: parents, academic community, different associations, NGO’s, etc.

Participation of civil society should be authentic, meaningful and all-inclusive to be considered as a tool for development, empowerment and social equity. It should include all voices, individuals or groups. Past experiences show that there are different dimensions, spheres, out-reach, levels and actors for citizens’ participation in education.

Rosa María Torres ended her presentation by introducing to the audience twenty experiences in Latin America where different civil society groups took the initiative on education.

(b) The Continental Education Secretary of the Second Summit of the People of the Americas

The Continental Education Secretary of the Second Summit of the People of the Americas was invited as one group representing civil society. Its Secretary General, Mr. Jocelyn Berthelot presented the organization and its mission to the audience. He also delineated the conclusions reached at the Hemispheric Forum on Education that took place the same days of the III Summit of the Americas.

Ministerial DialogueMinisters and Heads of Delegations from Canada, El Salvador,

Venezuela and Dominican republic expressed their views on civil society participation in education and their experiences when incorporating different groups into policy planning and implementation. They highlighted that there are different and complementary levels to the meaning of civil society and its participation. One of them is based in the definition of participation as a tool for relevance and efficiency. Another level is related to its relationship with the State and other agencies. The role of non-governmental organization was questioned by some sectors of the audience, specially when they sometimes complicate the direct relationship between every citizen and governmental offices.

(iv) Adoption of AgreementsThe Ministers and Heads of Delegations considered and approved the

resolutions and declarations proposed:Declaration of the Ministers of Education of the Americas,

CIDI/RME/doc.11/01 Rev.3Declaration Against Violence, CIDI/RME/doc.16/01 rev.1Project Proposals on Education, OEA/Ser.K/V.5.1 CIDI/RES 6Follow-up Mechanisms, OEA/Ser.K/V.5.1 CIDI/RES 7

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F. Closing SessionThe Closing Session took place the 26th September, at 3:15 pm. The

president of the II Meeting of Ministers of Education, Dr. Mercader, closed the event by thanking the participation of the Delegations and the efforts to achieve the goals set.

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IV. DECLARATIONS AND RESOLUTIONS

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION24 - 25 September 2001Punta del Este, Uruguay

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SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.11/01 rev.3Punta del Este, Uruguay 25 September 2001

Original: Spanish

DECLARATION BY THE EDUCATION MINISTERS OF THE AMERICAS

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DECLARATION BY THE EDUCATION MINISTERS OF THE AMERICAS

We, the Ministers of Education of the member countries of the Organization of American States, on the occasion of the Second Meeting of Ministers of Education under the aegis of CIDI-OAS, held at Punta del Este, Republic of Uruguay, as regards all matters relating to the education of our peoples, embrace the Declaration of Québec signed by the Heads of State and Government in April 2001 and the Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas:

1. We recognize the progress that has been made in pursuit of the education commitments entered into at the Second Summit of the Americas, most particularly: education in values and attention for vulnerable groups; special education; bi-lingual and intercultural education; programs to raise the professional profile of teachers and education administrators; strengthening education management; and using information and communications technologies in education. We also reaffirm the need to continue with the regional indicator and educational assessment projects as focal points with which to fully analyze the situation of education in the continent and to guide education policy decision-making.

2. We pledge to develop and implement projects that will emphasize quality and equality in education in order to overcome failure at school in the different forms it adopts; to improve school management and teacher training, and the involvement of families and other social agents; to offer proper secondary education and training services to young people, and the certification of job skills, so as to improve their incorporation into society and the productive apparatus; to strengthen higher education, science and technology, and academic mobility; and to promote new technologies at the service of education.

3. We resolve to strengthen the follow-up mechanism referred to in one of the resolutions of this Second Meeting of Ministers of Education, and to foster horizontal cooperation mechanisms, chiefly through exchanges of innovative education programs that have been consolidated in the region’s countries. In addition, we propose the development of a group of experts in innovation that would allow the sharing of resources throughout the region.

4. We state our interest in further pursuing the incorporation of new technologies into education, in order to improve learning and as an instrument at the service of teaching processes within schools. We have established the Educational Portal of the Americas, an on-line instrument at the service of the democratization of education, the essential mandate of which is to disseminate the opportunities of high academic quality offered by the distance learning approach as a first response to the connectivity agenda of the Québec Summit.

5. We have received the report of the consultation process with civil society which began in the Summit and were informed about the recent creation of the Continental Secretariat for Education.

6. We call upon the international technical assistance and financing agencies, and the OAS Technical Secretariat, to strengthen and increase the dynamism of the inter-agency cooperation mechanism, so it can articulate the efforts of those agencies and with the education ministries in a convergent agenda that is connected to national and subregional education policies.

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SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.16/01 Rev.1Punta del Este, Uruguay 25 September 2001

Original: Spanish

DECLARATION AGAINST VIOLENCE

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Declaration Against Violence

As we stand before the threats of irrational violence, war and terrorism that have been imposed upon the future of humanity; we, the Ministers of Education of the Americas, hereby proclaim our decision to deepen and expand the bounds of educational processes. For by so doing, we shall strengthen the knowledge, values and attitudes that recognize and champion diversity, tolerance, mutual respect, non-violence, social justice and equality, as well as cooperation and solidarity among all peoples.

To work for peace is to strengthen school systems so that children and youth can feel nurtured and protected, so that as they learn they can better understand the society to which they belong and the world around them. This implies developing the capacity to think, to exchange ideas, to comprehend, and to transform themselves and their environs through reasonable and active dialogue. It also implies reinforcing the study of history, the great knowledge of societies and their cultures, and understanding the dynamic forces of change that humanity has experienced through rooting individual identity in diversity.

To work for peace is to work for human development and social progress. It is to contribute so that children, youth and adults alike can find deeper meaning in their lives, renew the hope for a better future and build the confidence required to make that vision a reality. It also means contributing to the formation of a responsible public opinion that is capable of expressing itself in ways more mature and profound than mere mass media.

In response to this, as the Ministers of Education of the Americas, we commit ourselves to emphasize nonviolence and a culture of peace within the educational initiatives that form and reinforce our national and sub-regional values, and also promoting the construction of a Continental Program for Values in Education for 2003.

Finally, we declare our emphatic repudiation of the attacks on the United States of America and express our solidarity with this country as well as its condemnation of all acts of violence that affect peaceful coexistence.

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SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.18/01Punta del Este, Uruguay 25 September 2001

Original: Spanish

FOLLOW UP MECHANISMS

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CONSIDERING:

That the Heads of State and Government, gathered at the Third Summit of the Americas, agreed to entrust the Organization of American States (OAS) with organizing in Uruguay, within the framework of CIDI, a meeting of Ministers of Education with mandates including, inter alia, identifying and setting up appropriate hemispheric mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the education initiatives in the Plan of Action of the Quebec City Summit and continuing to promote actions on priorities identified at the Miami and Santiago Summits;

That the Plan of Action of the Santiago Summit established, as part of the Summit of the Americas follow-up process in the field of education, the Country Coordination mechanism, which was reaffirmed at the First Meeting of Ministers of Education held in Brazil;

That the OAS General Assembly has invited the member states to use CIDI mechanisms to conduct the inter-American dialogue and has urged them in particular to do so through the specialized or sectoral meetings at the ministerial level or its equivalent or through the inter-American committees, with the member states free to propose any necessary changes for the mechanisms to operate within CIDI,

RESOLVES:

1. To reaffirm that the Meeting of Ministers of Education within the framework of CIDI is the specific forum for implementing the dialogue on education matters intended to follow up on the mandates of the Summit of the Americas.

2. To maintain the coordination mechanism involving the eleven countries. (G-11)

3. To reaffirm that the country coordination mechanism is open to the participation of all interested countries.

4. To request the OAS General Secretariat to provide the coordination mechanism with the necessary support.

5. To entrust to the G-11 the elaboration of the creation of the Interamerican Commission of Education project, including for such matter all the interested countries. Such project should define its aims, specific contents and features for its operation and should be ready in a deadline period of not over three months. In the same manner, once the project is ready, request to the General Secretariat of the OAS, to present the project to all the Education Ministers for consideration and its approval.

24


Original: Spanish

PROJECT PROPOSALS ON EDUCATION

25

PROJECT PROPOSALS ON EDUCATION

CONSIDERING:

That CEPCIDI has been instructed to identify and implement, within the scope of its competence, specific partnership for development projects that reflect, in concrete terms, the desire for collective action of the Heads of State and Government and of CIDI’s sectoral meetings;

That the Heads of State and Government, gathered at the Third Summit of the Americas, agreed to entrust the Organization of American States with organizing in Uruguay, within the framework of CIDI, a meeting of Ministers of Education with mandates including, inter alia, identifying and setting up appropriate hemispheric mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the education initiatives contained in the Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas and continuing to promote actions on priorities identified at the Miami and Santiago Summits;

RESOLVES:

1. To instruct the next meeting of the Nonpermanent Specialized Committee (CENPE) responsible for Education, in drawing up the report referred to in Article 21 of the Statutes of the Special Multilateral Fund of CIDI (FEMCIDI) on partnership for development activities in the field of education recommended for execution in the next period, to give preferential attention to multilateral projects that respond to the commitments set forth at the Third Summit of the Americas and summarized in the following five central themes: (1) equality and quality; (2) management, decentralization, social participation, and teacher training; (3) young people, secondary education, and certifying job skills; (4) higher education, science and technology, and academic mobility; (5) new technologies applied to education.

2. To set up, as a mechanism for programming and designing regional projects, a meeting of specialists from the Ministries of Education, with the purpose of designing projects that respond to the lines of action indicated by the Summit of the Americas. The consolidated programs identified by the ministries will be used as raw materials for designing these projects.

3. To ask the financing agencies to provide funding for the regional cooperation projects entered into jointly by the countries at the Meeting of Education Ministry Specialists referred to in the previous paragraph.

26

Appendix I:

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

27

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.14/01 Rev.2/01Punta del Este, Uruguay 25 September 2001

Original: Spanish

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

A. MEMBER STATES

ARGENTINAJefe de Delegación Andrés Guillermo DelichMinistro de Educación

RepresentantesJuan Carlos GottifrediSecretario de Educación Superior

Lucas LuchiloJefe de Asesores del Gabinete del Ministro

Miguel ValloneDirector Nacional de Cooperación Silvia MontoyaDirectora Ejecutiva del Instituto para el Desarrollo de la Calidad Ejecutiva

Alejandra PecoraroConsejera Embajada Argentina

José Octavio BordónMinistro de Educación, Cultura y Ciencia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires

Darío PulferJefe de Gabinete ( Provincia de Buenos Aires)

Mario Oporto Enrique Bachner

BAHAMASJefe de DelegaciónAlvin SmithSecretario Parlamentario del Ministerio de Educación, Juventud y Deporte

RepresentantesCecil LongleyDirector de Educación

28

BRASILJefe de Delegación

Vitoria Alice CleaverJefe de Asesoría InternacionalGabinete del Ministro de Educación

RepresentantesPatricia Helena VicentiniAsesora Internacional Gabinete del Ministro de Educación

Tatiana BritoAsesora Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais

Pedro Maurillo Ortega TerraTercer SecretarioEmbajada de Brasil en Uruguay

CANADAJefe de DelegaciónGlenn HagelMinistro de Capacitación Terciaria y Técnica (Saskatchewan) Presidente del Consejo de Ministros de Educación de Canadá

François LegaultMinistro para la Educación y la Juventud (Québec)

RepresentantesSusan HarperEmbajadora de Canadá en Uruguay

Yvan DussaultViceministro Adjunto para la Planificación (Québec)

George MolloyDirector de Programas Internacionales y Proyectos EspecialesConsejo de Ministros de Educación de Canadá

Richard MartinGerente Principal de Programa Relaciones Académicas InternacionalesDepartamento de Relaciones Extranjeras y de Comercio Internacional

Jean-Marie BarretteJefe de la Dirección General de las América. Ministerio de Relaciones Internacionales (Québec)

Johanna ZumsteinEspecialista Principal en Educación. Agencia Canadiense para el Desarrollo Internacional

29

ObservadoresNathalie VergeDirectora de Gabinete del Ministerio de Educación de Quebec

Denis L´AnglaisDelegado del Gobierno de Québec en Argentina

Marie Claire Denyse PhilieConsultora

CHILEJefe de DelegaciónMariana AylwinMinistra de Educación

RepresentantesAna María QuirozRelaciones Internacionales

Vivian HeylJefa del Departamento de Estudios y Estadísticas

Josefina LiraJefe de Relaciones Internacionales

Lucía ValenzuelaRelaciones Internacionales

COLOMBIAJefe de DelegaciónMargarita Peña BorreroViceministro de Educación

Representante Arturo SarabiaEmbajador de Colombia en Uruguay

COSTA RICAJefe de DelegaciónGuillermo Vargas SalazarMinistro de Educación

RepresentantesElizabeth Martínez SequeiraAsesora del Ministro

Miranda Randall AlcazarAsesora del Ministro

EL SALVADORJefe de DelegaciónAna Evelyn Jacir de Lovo

30

Ministra de Educación

RepresentantesRafael Guido BejarAsesor Principal

ECUADORJefe de DelegaciónJuan Cordero IñiguezMinistro de Educación y Cultura, Deportes y Recreación

ESTADOS UNIDOSJefe de DelegaciónJane ManesAgregada Cultural de la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Uruguay

GUATEMALAJefe de DelegaciónBayardo Arturo Mejía MonzónViceministro de Educación

MEXICOJefe de DelegaciónSylvia Ortega SalazarSubsecretaria de Servicios Educativos para el Distrito Federal

RepresentantesIsabel Farha ValenzuelaDirectora de Relaciones Multilaterales

Daniel González SpencerDirector General de Relaciones Internacionales

NICARAGUAJefe de DelegaciónFernando Robleto LangMinsitro de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

RepresentantesAna Luisa Sanchez NarvaezDirectora General de Educación

Emilio Porta PallaisAsesor de la Dirección Superior

PARAGUAYJefe de DelegaciónDarío Zárate Arellano Ministro de Educación y Cultura

31

RepresentantesBlanca Ovelar de DuarteViceministro de Educación

Lourdes BogadoPrimera SecretariaEmbajada de Paraguay en Uruguay

PERUJefe de Delegación Nicolás LynchMinistro de Educación

REPUBLICA DOMINICANAJefe de DelegaciónRoberto FulcarSubsecretario de Estado de Educación

Representantes Rubén SiliéAsesor Nacional del Ministerio

ST. VINCENT AND GRENADINESJefe de DelegaciónClifton Clayton BurginMinistro de Educación, Juventud y Deportes

URUGUAYJefe de DelegaciónAntonio MercaderMinistro de Educación y Cultura

RepresentantesJosé Carlos CardosoSubsecretario de Educación y Cultura

José Luis VeraDirector General

Enrique Martínez LarrecheaDirector de Educación

María Teresa Salvo PaysséDirección de Educación

Adriana Morillas ArandaDirección de Educación

VENEZUELAJefe de DelegaciónHéctor Navarro Díaz

32

Ministro de Educación Cultura y Deportes

RepresentantesNelson Barrios GonzálezDirector de Relaciones Internacionales

B. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

BANCO MUNDIALAntonio Gomes PereiraConsultor

BANCO INTERAMERICANO DE DESARROLLO Ernesto MartínezBID - Uruguay

INSTITUTO INTERAMERICANO DEL NIÑOAlejandro BonassoDirector General

ORGANIZACION DE ESTADOS IBEROAMERICANOSFrancisco PiñónSecretario General

Francisco De LucaAsesor Secretario General

Pablo UrquizaRepresentante, Oficina en Argentina

UNESCOJohn DanielDirector General Adjunto de EducaciónParis, Francia

Ana Luisa MachadoDirectora Regional de EducaciónSantiago, Chile

Ana María CorvalánConsultora Santiago, Chile

Miguel Angel Enríquez BercianoDirector de UNESCO/ORCYTMontevideo, Uruguay

Claudio RamaDirector de UNESCO/IESALCCaracas, Venezuela

UNICEFH. Garren Lumpkin

33

Asesor de EducaciónOficina Regional para América Latina y el CaribePanamá

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES PARA EL DESARROLLOFederico S. BaroneDirector

Alicia RicheroCoordinadora Servicios de Información

CONVENIO ANDRES BELLOMartha Vargas de AvellaCoordinadora RegionalProyecto Materiales Educativos

ORGANIZACION UNIVERSITARIA INTERAMERICANAPatricia Gudiño FernándezDirectora Ejecutiva del Colegio de las AméricasMontreal, Canadá

SECRETARIA CONTINENTAL SOBRE EDUCACIONJocelyn BerthelotSecretario General

CONFEDERACION DE EDUCADORES AMERICANOSFernando RealMiembro del Comité de Coordinación de la Secretaría

C. ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

César GaviriaSecretario General

Roberto CasañasDirector OEA en Uruguay

Sofíaleticia MoralesDirector de la Unidad de Desarrollo Social y Educación

Carlos E. PaldaoDirector del Departamento Tecnología de la Información para el Desarrollo Humano, AICD

Alfonso QuiñonezDirector de Políticas de Cooperación, AICD

Jorge LópezAsesor del Secretario General

Gaby Fujimoto-GómezEspecialista Principal en EducaciónUnidad de Desarrollo Social y Educación

Luis MathóEspecialista Principal en Conferencias

34

Noel Mc GinnExpositor Consultor

Christian MedinaConsultorUnidad de Desarrollo Social y Educación

David EdwardsConsultorUnidad de Desarrollo Social y Educación

Rosana MartinelliConsultorUnidad de Desarrollo Social y Educación

Eduardo FragnaudJefe de Documentos y Sistemas

35

Appendix II:

DRAFT AGENDA, SCHEDULE AND ANNOTATED AGENDA

36

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.1/01 Rev.1Punta del Este, Uruguay 25 September 2001

Original: Spanish

DRAFT AGENDASECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION

IN THE FRAMEWORK OF CIDI

1. Adoption of the agenda

2. Analytical report of the Plan of Action of the Santiago Summit in the area of education: Achievements and challenges

3. Educational outlook for the Hemisphere in the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas

4. Mechanisms for horizontal cooperation: Ongoing program portfolio divided by major topic

5. Connectivity for the development of human potential. Educational portal of the Americas

6. Follow-up mechanisms:a. Country coordinationb. Support from the OAS as technical secretariatc. Inter-American Committee on Education

7. Civil society participation in education:a. Results on the Consultation Process to Civil Society Organizations in the Framework

of the III Summit of the Americasb. Continental Secretariat on Education

8. Financing mechanisms

9. Interagency cooperation mechanism

10. Special topics

11. Adoption of agreements

12. Other business

37

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc. 2/01 Rev.1Punta del Este, Uruguay 18 September 2001

Original: Spanish

DRAFT SCHEDULESECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION

IN THE CIDI FRAMEWORK

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2001

8:00 - 8:30 a.m. REGISTRATION OF PARTICIPANTS

8:30 - 9:00 a.m. PREPARATORY SESSIONElection of the Chair and Vice ChairConsideration of the Draft Agenda and duration of the MeetingOther business

9:00 - 9:30 a.m. INAUGURAL SESSION (Special Program)Remarks by Dr. Jorge Batlle, President of UruguayRemarks by Dr. Cesar Gaviria, Secretary General of the OAS

9:30 - 9:40 a.m. High Authorities depart

9:40 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. FIRST PLENARY SESSION

9:40 - 9:45 a.m. Ratification of agreements reached during the preparatory session

9:45 - 10:00 a.m. Presentation of the Analytical Report of the Plan of Action of the Santiago Summit in the Area of Education: Achievements and Challenges

10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Ministerial dialogue

11:00 - 11:15 a.m. Break

11:15 - 11:45 a.m. Educational outlook for the Hemisphere in the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas

11:45 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Ministerial dialogue

1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Lunch breakLunch offered to the Heads of Delegation by the Minister of Education from Uruguay.

3:00 - 6:30 p.m. SECOND PLENARY SESSION

3:00 - 3:30 p.m. Educational priorities of the Third Summit: Core issues. Mechanisms for horizontal cooperation. Ongoing consolidated program portfolio

3:30 - 4:15 p.m. Ministerial dialogue

38

4:15 - 4:30 p.m. Reflections by Dr. Noel McGinn, winner of the Andrés Bello Inter-American Education Prize, on educational cooperation in the Americas.


5:00 - 5:15 p.m. Break

5:15 - 5:45 p.m. Presentation by International Organizations

5:45 - 6:10 p.m. Connectivity for the development of human potential Presentation by the Connectivity Institute for the Americas


6:40 - 7:00 p.m. Presentation of the Educational Portal of the Americas

7:00 p.m. Inauguration of the Educational Portal of the Americas

8:00 p.m. Reception offered by the Minister of Education from Uruguay at Ralli Museum

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2001

9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. THIRD PLENARY SESSION

9:00 - 9:30 a.m. Presentation on mechanisms for following up on the Ministerial Meetings: a. Country coordination; b. Technical Secretariat c. Inter-American Committee on Education


10:15 - 10:30 a.m. Presentation on the participation of Civil Society in Education

10:30 - 10:40 a.m. Presentation of the Results of the "Consultative Process to Civil Society Organizations in the framework of the Summit of the Americas"

10:40 - 10:50 a.m. Presentation by the Continental Secretariat on Education


11:20 - 11:30 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m. - 12 noon Presentation on Financing Mechanismsa. Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Developmentb. Inter-American Development Bankc. World Bank

12:00 - 12:15 p.m. Presentation on Interagency Consensus-building Mechanisms


1:00 - 1:20 p.m. Special Topics

39

document.doc

1:20 - 1:50 p.m. Adoption of agreements

1:50 - 1:55 p.m. Other business

1:55 - 2:00 p.m. Closing ceremony

2:00 p.m. Farewell cocktail

40

41

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc. 3/01Punta del Este, Uruguay 17 September 2001

Original: Spanish

DRAFT ANNOTATED AGENDABased on the agenda prepared by theG-11 in Mexico on August 9-10, 2001

SUBJECT SPEAKERS NOTES

1 Approval of the Agenda

2

Analytical Report of the Plan of Action of the Santiago Summit in the area of education: Achievements and Challenges

Presentation by the Minister of Education of Mexico, Dr. Reyes Tamez Guerra

As the coordinator for educational issues, the Secretary of Public Education of Mexico will present the achievements and challenges in the educational area of the Plan of Action between the Second and Third Summit of the Americas.

3

Educational outlook for the Hemisphere in the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas

Presentation by the Minister of Education of Chile, Dra. Mariana Alwin

Ministerial dialogue

As joint head of the Educational Indicators Regional Project (PRIE), the Minister of Education of Chile will make a presentation on progress in education in the Hemisphere, and the challenges it poses.Ministers will be encouraged to discuss this topic among themselves.

4

Educational priorities of the Third Summit Core issues. Mechanisms for horizontal cooperation. Ongoing consolidated program portfolio

Presentation by Director of the Unit of Social Development and Eduaction of the OAS


Presentation by Dr. Noel McGinn


The UDSE will set forth the educational priorities of the Third Summit of the Americas, the five core issues they address, and a mechanism for horizontal cooperation based on a set of consolidated programs established by the countries.Reflections by Dr. Noel McGinn, winner of the Andrés Bello Inter-American Education Prize, on educational cooperation in the Americas. This presentation is expected to give rise to a ministerial dialogue.

5 Connectivity for the development of human potential

Educational portal of the Americas

Presentation by the Connectivity Institute for the Americas


Presentation by the Director of the OAS' Interamerican Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD) Inauguration during recess

Canada will give a presentation on the “Connectivity Institute for the Americas” initiative, to be followed by a ministerial dialogue.

The Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development of the OAS will present the “Educational Portal of the Americas,” which will then be inaugurated. The portal is an instrument

42

SUBJECT SPEAKERS NOTES

for disseminating and facilitating access to tertiary level distance learning opportunities in the Americas.

6

Follow-up mechanisms:1. Country coordination2. Strengthening of country

coordination through USDE/OAS technical secretariat support

3. Inter-American Committee on Education

Presentation by the Minister of Education of Mexico, Dr. Reyes Tamez Guerra.

Presentation by the IACD


As the coordinator for educational issues, the Secretary of Public Education of Mexico will describe steps being taken to strengthen and consolidate the Group following up on education initiatives in the Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas. Presentation on the scope and impact of an Inter-American Committee on Education. An in-depth ministerial dialogue is expected.

7 Civil society participation in education

Presentation to Ministers by the Especialist Dra. Rosa Maria Torres

Presentation by PARTICIPA

Presentation by Jocelyn Berthelot representing the Continental Secretariat on Education


Reflexion on the significance of Civil Society participation

Presentation by PARTICIPA on the Process of Consultation to Civil Society Organitations

Presentation by the Continental Secretariat on Education

8

Financing mechanisms Presentation by the Director of the IACDPresentation by the World BankPresentation by the Inter-American Development Bank.


The Director of the IACD will report on the re-ordering and strengthening of OAS financing mechanisms in response to the mandates of the Third Summit of the Americas. The Word Bank and the IDB will explain the likely financing strategies.

9 Interagency cooperation mechanism

Presentation by the international cooperation agencies


The international cooperation and financial agencies will present a mechanism for coordination among themselves, geared to meeting the requirements of countries in the framework of the Third Summit of the Americas. They will report on offers of cooperation.

10 Adoption of agreements Participation by ministers

The “Declaration of the Second Meeting of Education Ministers of CIDI” will be discussed and signed. Participants will ratify their support for the Plan of Action of the Third Summit in the area of education.

11 Other business Participation by ministers Opportunity for ministers to debate issues not included on the agenda.

43

document.doc

APPENDIX III:

LIST OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

44


Original: Spanish

List of documentsClassification Title of the Document Languages

CIDI/REM/doc.1 Proposed Draft Agenda S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.2 Proposed Schedule S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.3 Proposed Annotated Agenda S ECIDI/REM/doc.4 Report analysing the Santiago Plan of Action for Education:

Achievements and Challenges S E F P

CIDI/REM/doc.5 Executive Summary of the Report on Regional Education Indicators (PRIE)

S E F P

CIDI/REM/doc.6 Horizontal Cooperation Mechanisms Among Counties (Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs organized by Thematic Area)

S E P

CIDI/REM/doc.7 The Education Portal of the Americas S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.8 Matrix identifying opportunities for collaborative work among

International Agencies in common areasS E F P

CIDI/REM/doc.9 Project Resolution: Proposal for Projects on Education S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.10 Project Resolution: Follow-up mechanisms S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.10 Rev.1 Project Resolution: Follow-up mechanisms S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.10 Rev.2 Project Resolution: Follow-up mechanisms S E FCIDI/REM/doc.11 Declaration by the Ministers of Education Project and Plan of Action S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.11 Rev.1 Declaration project and Plan of Action S E F PCIDI/REM/doc.12 Towards International Cooperation in Education for Integration in the

AmericasS E F P

CIDI/REM/doc.13 Memorandum of the Executive Secretariat for Integral Development on the invitations to the II Meeting of Ministers of Education in the framework of CIDI

S E F P

CIDI/REM/doc.14 List of Participants TCIDI/REM/doc.15 List of Documents TCIDI/REM/doc.16 Declaration against Violence S F PCIDI/REM/inf.1 Analytical report on the achievements and challenges on education in the

Americans. From Santiago to Quebec. (Informative Document presented by the Mexican Delegation)

T

CIDI/REM/inf.2 The Americas Summit. Meeting of Ministers of Education. Regional Project on Education (Informative document presented by the Chilean Delegation and UNESCO-OREALC).

T

CIDI/REM/inf.3 III Summit of the Americas. Plan of Action. (Informative Document presented by the General Secretariat of the OAS)

T

CIDI/REM/inf.4 Technology is the Answer. (Document submitted by UNESCO) TCIDI/REM/inf.5 International Cooperation on the Knowledge Era (Informative Document

presented by Dr. Noel F. McGinn) T

CIDI/REM/inf.6 Program Proposal. (Informative Document presented by the Americas Institute for Connectivity)

T

CIDI/REM/inf.7 Presentation done by the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development of the OAS. (Informative Document presented by the General Secretariat of the OAS)

S E

45

APPENDIX IV:

REPORT ANALYZING THE SANTIAGO SUMMIT PLAN OF ACTION ON EDUCATION: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES

46


Original: Spanish

REPORT ANALYZING THE SANTIAGO PLAN OF ACTION FOR EDUCATION:ACHVIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES

47

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION (SEP)

OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

REPORT ANALYZING THE SANTIAGO PLAN OF ACTION FOR EDUCATION:ACHVIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES

Public Education Secretariat - Mexico

The Summit of the Americas provides a mechanism for hemispheric dialogue at the highest level. This is where the priority areas of the hemispheric agenda are determined and agreements established that contribute to the comprehensive and sustained development of the region. Within this framework, all countries have made a commitment to work towards and implement actions to achieve the goals proposed and to undertake joint activities that facilitate cooperation and the sharing of experiences among nations. As a result, efforts have been made to raise standards at all educational levels, while striving, on an ongoing basis, for quality education that is equitable and relevant. As a result of these efforts, illiteracy, dropout, repetition, and age-related lag rates have declined significantly virtually everywhere in the Hemisphere.

Mexico, in its capacity as the coordinating country for the Education Chapter of the Summit of the Americas, is submitting a report analyzing the activities conducted between the Santiago and Quebec Summits in the area of education in the Hemisphere. In this report, the Secretary of Public Education will provide, in an objective and specific manner, an overview of the critical aspects related to education in the Americas, the educational priorities established, and the principles underlying the different aspects of this area that is being developed. Emphasis is placed on the importance of joint activities conducted, which, without prejudice to the social, economic, and development priorities of each region of the Hemisphere, have enabled attainment of a level that reflects some progress in the goal of providing educational services to all persons needing it, although it is acknowledged that a great deal remains to be done.

A synthesis will be provided of the activities conducted in relation to the commitments made with respect to each of the nine lines of the Plan of Action for Education signed at the First Meeting of Ministers of the OAS Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), held in Brasilia, Brazil in July 1998, and emphasis will be placed on a number of areas of achievement by providing a general overview of the projects conducted within this framework. Therefore, focusing on the main principles; namely, quality, equity, and relevance, of this mechanism for dialogue and cooperation, their practical application will be demonstrated, through activities conducted in the key areas of each line of action.

The quality goal covers, in effect, each area of action and serves as the linchpin of the educational systems in the countries and the needs and interests of persons being educated. Nothing would be achieved without this key principle. However, its inclusion in all activities is seen specifically in the topic of evaluation of the quality of education (line 2), assigning value and professionalism to teaching staff (line 3), educational management and decentralization (line 4), the use of new technologies in education (line 8), as well as the establishment of scholarship

48

and exchange systems (line 9). In that context, and including the principle of relevance, understood as the ability of educational systems to meet the needs and aspirations of society as a whole, taking into account its social, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, the results of the activities conducted with respect to meeting the needs of the peoples of the Americas in a suitable manner will be provided: the adaptation of the curriculums and strategies to the indigenous population in the context of bilingual intercultural programs (line 6), and training programs geared towards employment and certification of job-related competencies (line 5).

Everywhere in the Hemisphere, equity has paved the way for the establishment of conditions that provide opportunities for access to education. Consequently, the emphasis placed on compensatory programs and attention to populations at risk (line 1) will be noted, as well as bilingual intercultural education programs (line 6), and the importance assigned to training related to values (line 7). In addition, the use of new technologies in the educational sphere (line 8), has provided expanded opportunities for access to education by large sectors of the population and persons living in separate and remote areas of the different countries of the Hemisphere.

Within this frame of reference, a synthesis will be provided of the method for designing different multilateral projects, which include compensatory intersectoral programs for the development of primary and secondary educational levels; programs geared towards the education of at-risk groups, childhood education, gender equity programs, and the development of minors with disabilities; teaching development programs; programs aimed at institutional management and development; the job education program and the multicultural education program, programs geared towards the promotion of information technology, and distance education, among others.

These projects have received and will continue to receive technical and financial assistance from the Organization of American States (OAS), the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); the Regional Office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO-OREALC), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC).

An overview will also be provided, based on the coordination of the Educational Chapter, of what remains to be done and the activities to be conducted in order to attain the goals proposed. The implicit aim of the information provided will be to focus the attention of the Ministries of Education of the Americas on the need for harmony in terms of efforts and common commitments, inasmuch as each activity proposed offers yet another possibility to counteract the negative aspects resulting from differences in terms of development in the different regions of the Hemisphere.

Lastly, the lessons learned during the process will be presented, as well as the importance of developing those national initiatives that show promise and have been shared through horizontal cooperation.

49

APPENDIX V:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE REPORT ON REGIONAL EDUCATION INDICATORS (PRIE)

50


Original: Spanish

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE REPORT ON REGIONAL EDUCATION INDICATORS (PRIE)

51

REGIONAL EDUCATION INDICATOR PROJECT SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

REGIONAL REPORT PRELIMINARY VERSION

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

COUNTRY RESPONSIBLE: CHILE

WITH ASSISTANCE FROM UNESCO/OREALC

Santiago, Chile

August 2001

Report by the Regional Educational Indicator Project (PRIE).

Coordinators: Vivian Heyl, Ministry of Education, Chile Ana María Corvalán, UNESCO/OREALC

Working Group: Paula Darville, Ministry of Education, Chile Paula Louzano, Consultant, PRIE

Kathryn Gwatkin, Intern, Princeton UniversityJuan Carlos Palafox, Consultant, OREALC/PRIECésar Guadalupe, Consultant, PRIE

UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics prepared the statistics and designed most of the education indicators contained in this report.

USAID, UNESCO/OREALC, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, the Andrés Bello Convention, the World Bank, and the governments of Chile, the USA, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico are helping fund the PRIE’s activities.

INTRODUCTION

The Regional Education Indicator Project (PRIE) initiative arose from the Second Summit of the Americas, at which the hemisphere’s heads of state and government identified education as the region’s top priority.

In pursuit of effective education policies for the region, it was decided to strengthen the gathering of data and information, thereby supplying the education field with comparative indicators. These indicators would help provide an overview of how education systems were working and what results were being obtained with the region’s increased investment in education.

One year into the Regional Education Indicator Project, this Preliminary Report represents a significant contribution to the analysis of education in the Americas. It is the product of a joint effort by the region’s countries, under the coordination of Chile’s Ministry of Education and with technical assistance from UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This collective construct reflects the American nations’ interest in obtaining a comparative perspective on education, learning from past achievements, and identifying shortcomings in order to tackle them and thus progress toward meeting the goals set for 2010 at the Summit of the Americas.

This first effort shows us that it is possible to travel this path together, and it encourages us to continue fine-tuning the indicators’ conceptual and methodological definitions so they can portray an objective picture of our different education systems. It also challenges us to push ahead and create better instruments for assessing progress in equality and quality in the region.

Carrying out this project implies overcoming the difficulties inherent in the design of comparable indicators and overcoming the obstacles that keep us from having reliable, valid, and timely statistical figures. The Regional Education Indicator Project has brought our countries’ different information gathering initiatives together, and it has received assistance from UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics in designing its indicators.

We must continue working together until 2010 in order to develop a solid body of comparable education indicators that will provide us with an objective perspective on the situation within our education systems and thus help us define effective policies in pursuit of the goals set by the region’s heads of state and government and ministers of education.

Mariana Aylwin Oyarzún Ana Luiza MachadoMinister for Education Director, Regional Office for CHILE Education in Latin America and the Caribbean UNESCO/OREALC

THE REGIONAL EDUCATION INDICATOR PROJECT – PRIE

G. Background

At the Second Summit of the Americas (Chile, April 1998), the Heads of State and Government adopted a Plan of Action for Education in the region, with the following general goals: ensuring, by the year 2010, universal access to quality primary education for all children; providing access to quality secondary education for at least 75 percent of young people, with increasing percentages of young people completing secondary education; and providing the general population with opportunities for lifelong learning.

At the meeting of the education ministers of the countries involved in the Second Summit of the Americas (Brasilia, July 1998), Chile’s Ministry of Education offered to coordinate the design and implementation of a Regional Education Indicator Project.

H. Development

Chile’s Ministry of Education and UNESCO/OREALC entered into a cooperation agreement for the development and execution of the Regional Education Indicator Project (PRIE). This effort is also receiving assistance from UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics.

Interested countries from across the hemisphere met in Washington, D.C., in August 2000; on that occasion, Chile explained the PRIE’s content and methods and began work on its implementation.

For executing the project, it has been proposed that the indicators should be designed on the basis of the initiatives already existing in the region (such as the OECD/UNESCO World Education Indicators effort, WEI; the OECD’s INES program; the MERCOSUR project; and CREMIS in the Caribbean), and a coherent strategy should be established so that all the nations of the hemisphere can work together on their development.

I. Objectives

The PRIE has set itself the following objectives:

– Building a basic set of comparable education indicators for the Americas, based on existing initiatives.

– Strengthening national indicator systems and developing a technical cooperation program. – Publishing these indicators and encouraging their use in the adoption of education

policies.

J. Components and Work Methods

In pursuit of its objectives, the PRIE uses three interrelated components, each of which follows its own working method. These components are the following:

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4.1 Indicator Design

The PRIE, working in conjunction with UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, supports the countries as they gather information in accordance with the Institute’s questionnaires. In addition, the Institute designs the indicators used by the PRIE.

At the same time, working groups made up of professionals from the countries are established, in accordance with the categories of analysis used by the PRIE and with the countries’ own interests and priorities. The aim of this is to further pursue the conceptual and methodological contents of the indicators in question or to develop theoretical aspects and new indicators that can expand knowledge in the different areas and, consequently, facilitate a better understanding of the education sector and of society as a whole.

4.2 Technical Assistance

The PRIE provides the countries with technical assistance so they can better respond to the questionnaire from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and to help them improve their information systems and education statistics.

A technical assistance program has been designed and launched. Depending on their needs, it offers the countries three alternatives: individual assistance for countries; assistance for groups of countries that share common interests; and internships in experienced nations, offered to other groups of countries.

4.3 Dissemination and Analysis

The PRIE has drawn up a Regional Report, using the project’s 25 indicators and statistical data for 1998, as returned on the UNESCO Institute for Statistics questionnaire. The preliminary results have been presented at the education ministers’ Third Summit follow-up meeting.

K. Expected Results

The results we expect after the PRIE’s planned three-year execution period are the following:

– A set of comparable education indicators, calculated with the active involvement of the countries in question, to enable them to make better decisions in the field of education policy.

– A culture of generating and using quality information in education decision-making. – A continuous strengthening of the statistics systems within the region’s countries. – Strengthening the region’s permanent education information system.

L. Funding

This project is being financed with funds from both governments and international organizations. In particular, the PRIE receives funding from USAID, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, UNESCO/OREALC, the Andrés Bello Convention, the World Bank, and the governments of Chile, the USA, Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This executive summary covers the main issues dealt with in the first report of the Regional Education Indicator Project (PRIE). It offers an overview of each of the areas that the PRIE studies, namely: the context surrounding the different education systems; access to and participation in education, with special emphasis on how much the countries have progressed; the resources channeled into education, how funding is distributed among different education levels, and the working conditions of teachers; and the quality of education and its social impact. The figures given in this report refer, for the most part, to 1998. Finally, the main conclusions reached by the PRIE and the challenges still facing it are discussed.

Context

The demographic breakdown is an important factor in designing and implementing education policies. The number of children and young people in the populations determines the potential demand for education and, consequently, helps shape the demand for teachers, material resources, and physical facilities. The American continent is composed of 42 countries and almost 800 million people. Of these, some 500 million are in Latin America and the Caribbean, with almost 300 million in the USA and Canada. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are around 105 million children aged between 5 and 14 (the primary and junior-high age groups in most of the countries) and 50 million young people between the ages of 15 and 19 who would, in most cases, be eligible for junior-high or high school.

An analysis of the school-age population (between 5 and 19 years) reveals that there are countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Belize, Paraguay, Bolivia, El Salvador, Suriname, Ecuador, and Peru, where that age range accounts for more than one-third of the population. Consequently, because of their higher potential student numbers, these countries are the ones that need the greatest investment in their education systems. This group includes Nicaragua, Haiti, and Honduras — the region’s three poorest countries in terms of per capita GDP and, consequently, less economically able to meet this demand.

The difference in age-group breakdown seen among the national populations of Latin America and the Caribbean is not just caused by current demographic disparities; it is also the result of their being at different stages in the demographic transition process, due chiefly to changing fertility rates. All the region’s countries report decelerating demographic growth, although varying speeds are at play. Countries that in 1998 had equal proportions of their populations aged between 5 and 14 years — such as Belize and Paraguay, for example, with children aged from 5 to 14 years accounting for 26 percent of the total — will be subject to different pressures, in terms of future education demands, from the different behavior patterns prevailing in their population growth rates. Thus, Paraguay, with a higher rate of population growth than Belize, will have to face greater demand for education from within that age group.

Not only do demographic trends serve as indicators of demand levels, they also indicate the economic potential for responding to those levels of demand. The dependency index, which records the ratio between the theoretical number of dependents (i.e., children aged 0 to 14 and seniors older than 65) and the theoretical number of individuals in the work force (that is, people aged 15 to 64), shows the effort that the population (theoretically, the economically active subset thereof) must make to cover the needs of the most vulnerable population segments. That index’s average level throughout the Latin American and Caribbean region is six: in other words, each ten people theoretically in the work force theoretically support six dependents. This

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average is lower than that of the less developed countries, where it stands at around nine, and higher than that of the most developed nations, including the USA and Canada, where the figure is five. This means that the least developed countries have 50 percent more dependents per working individual than the regional average; in contrast, the most developed countries have 20 percent fewer.

There is a negative correlation between per capita GDP and the dependency index: that is, lower per capita GDP levels (greater poverty) are associated with higher rates of dependency. Not only do countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti suffer from limited financial resources, they also have a larger dependent population than other countries with higher levels of per capita income, such as Barbados and Chile.

Average annual per capita GDP in the Americas, including the USA and Canada, totals $15,257, expressed in purchasing power parity dollars. No other indicator in the region varies as wildly as this one. The range goes from USD-PPP $29,605 per person per year in the United States to $1,383 in Nicaragua. In other words, the USA’s per capita GDP is almost 25 times that of Nicaragua. Taking only the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean into account, however, the per capita GDP figure is USD-PPP $6,572. Although the disparity between the richest and poorest countries is less pronounced than when the USA and Canada are included, there are still differences among the nations. Per capita GDP ranges from USD-PPP $14,614 in The Bahamas to $1,383 dollars in Nicaragua; in other words, The Bahamas has a rate of per capita GDP that is almost eleven times higher. Of the 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations for which figures are available, only ten score above the regional average: five in the Caribbean (The Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and St. Kitts and Nevis) and five in Latin America (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil).

The Gini coefficient, which measures countries’ internal income inequalities, reports an average in the OECD1 nations of 31, compared with a figure of 52 for Latin America. This means that the OECD nations are a lot closer to perfect equality than the countries of Latin America. Studies conducted by the OECD indicate that while gender-related differences in education coverage have fallen in most of the world’s countries, disparities arising from income levels have increased. That result has even greater implications for Latin America, the most unequal region in terms of income distribution.

The correlation between the Gini coefficient and educational inequality (that is, the difference in years of schooling between 25-year-olds in the richest ten percent of the population and those in the poorest ten percent) is positive: greater inequalities in income levels mean greater differences in the years spent at school by the rich and by the poor. For example, a 25-year-old from the richest decile in Mexico, a country with one of the region’s highest Gini coefficients (around 54), will have attended school for around six times longer than a person of the same age from the poorest decile. Thus, while the richest ten percent of Mexicans go to school for an average of 12 years, people in the poorest ten percent of the population have only two years of schooling. In contrast, in Uruguay — Latin America’s most equitable country, with a Gini coefficient of 42 — a 25-year-old from the richest ten percent has twice as many years of education as an individual of the same age from the poorest decile. There, while the richest ten percent study for an average of 12 years, the corresponding figure for the poorest decile is six.

1 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .

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A study conducted by ECLAC2 says that 12 years’ education is the minimum threshold for escaping poverty. After reaching that threshold, the probability of earning enough to get out of poverty is higher than 80 percent. Thus, the prevailing situation makes it less likely that this level will be reached.

Access, Participation, and Progress

Education produces citizens who are able to live within society and contribute to it, and individuals who can adapt to the new demands of modern labor markets. It is therefore in society’s interest to guarantee educational opportunities for all citizens.

Obligatory education and periods of formal study demonstrate, in theory, nations’ aspirations in terms of the minimum amount of education to which their people are entitled. Requirements in Latin America range from 6 to 11 years which, in most instances, would cover the time spent in primary and junior-high education. Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama — that is, three countries from eighteen — require minimums of six years, whereas Peru is the only Latin American country that requires more than ten years of obligatory schooling. In the Caribbean, in contrast, the range of obligatory schooling is wider: the shortest period, six years, is found in Haiti, Jamaica, and Suriname; whereas Anguilla, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with 13 years, have the longest. However, in contrast to the situation in Latin America, all the countries in the Caribbean subregion, with four exceptions, require between 10 and 13 years of obligatory schooling. The Caribbean situation is closer to that of Canada and the USA, where between 10 and 14 years of education are compulsory. While obligatory schooling in the USA varies from one state to the next, in Canada it is set at the national level; education is obligatory for those aged from 6 to 16.

An analysis of compulsory schooling levels alongside the educational breakdown of the adult population gives an idea of the extent to which the rules imposed by countries are observed. Thus, this serves to indicate how aspirations measure up against the reality of the years of schooling completed by the population.

Although Argentina, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela require ten years of education, only Argentina and Uruguay have succeeded in ensuring that almost half their populations meet that requirement. In contrast, in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, only 30 and 40 percent of the population, respectively, finish ten years of schooling or more. So, although none of the countries requiring a minimum of ten years at school has actually managed to provide universal education to that level, some countries have made better progress than others.

Eight Latin American countries require between eight and nine years spent at school. Of these, only Chile and Mexico can report that more than 90 percent of their populations aged between 15 and 24 have spent at least six years studying. Of the three countries that require six years of formal schooling, only Panama has succeeded in providing that level of education for more than 90 percent of its population; meanwhile, in Honduras and Nicaragua, around 80 and 70 percent of the population, respectively, attain the minimum level set by their countries.

Although none of our countries has managed to provide all its citizens with the years of schooling required by law, they have clearly progressed at different speeds; this shows that in some cases, the requirements set are not suited to the nations’ conditions and that there is not

2 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

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always a correlation between aspirations and achievements. In other words, a country that requires only six years of schooling, such as Panama, has a better education profile than other countries with higher formal requirements, such as Brazil (eight years) and El Salvador (nine years).

Both the gross and net rates for access to the first year of primary education show that the region has no serious access problems. Thus, the gross rate ranges from 94 percent in Jamaica to 246 percent in Haiti. A gross rate in excess of 100 percent — which is the case in the vast majority of the region’s countries — indicates that the education systems have the capacity to receive all the children of official school age: in other words, teachers and facilities are available for all children of the applicable age. But it also underscores the enormous extent to which the age at which formal education begins can vary from the one set by law.

Enrollment in preschool education also varies greatly across the region. Differences in the gross rate, in particular, are pronounced, ranging from 11 percent in The Bahamas to 105 percent in Guyana; the net rate, in comparison, varies from 10 percent in Trinidad and Tobago to 93 percent in the Netherlands Antilles. No patterns that would distinguish the trends in one subregion from those of the other are apparent.

The education cycle in which countries have invested the greatest effort seems to be the primary level; indeed, the average net enrollment level in Latin America (97 percent) and in some Caribbean countries show that the region is close to providing universal primary education. In Latin America, the lowest net primary school enrollment rates are above the top rates reported for other levels of education; in addition, coverage in primary education is more equal than in either preschool or secondary education. This means that the possibility of entering primary education is distributed more equitably among the countries. For example, Brazil has a net enrollment rate of 98 percent, which means that of every ten children of school age, practically all of them are studying; meanwhile, in Haiti and Nicaragua (countries with net enrollment rates of 80 percent, the lowest in the region), eight out of every ten children in the relevant age group are enrolled in primary education.

Although from our countries’ achievements in primary education coverage it could be concluded that there are no major access problems at that level, this indicator could well hide weaknesses within the system. For example, these figures give no information about whether the students remain at school or successfully conclude their primary education. A study of schooling levels in our nations indicates that in reality, the conclusion of primary education is still a challenge for several of the region’s countries: for example, in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Honduras, fewer than 75 percent of the population aged between 15 and 24 years have attended school for six years or more.

Although, on average, the demand for secondary education is better covered than the demand for preschool education, it does not approach the level of primary level coverage. Gross secondary school enrollment rates range from 33 percent in Guatemala and Haiti to 105 percent in Barbados, while the net enrollment rate varies from 20 percent in Haiti to 105 percent in Barbados. The low coverage at this level, together with pronounced differences in access to secondary education among our countries, has major implications for the region’s development and its chances of meeting the goals set by the Summit of the Americas.

This result is of greater import within the context of economic globalization, wherein secondary education is a minimum prerequisite for the development of a competitive work force. In Latin America, the average net enrollment rate indicates that only 54 percent of the young

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people of secondary-school age are enrolled in schools; this means that the subregion faces the risk of a widening gap vis-à-vis the developed countries. This situation is even more serious in those nations that fall short of the average, a group that includes most of the subregion’s countries. This suggests that drop-out rates are a common challenge in the Latin American subregion.

Enrollment issues are seen differently in Canada and the USA, which to some extent weakens regional comparability. In speaking of education coverage, the emphasis in Canada and the USA is on preschool, secondary, and tertiary education rather than on primary schooling, which practically enjoys universal access already. In both the USA and Canada, coverage is almost universal — i.e., over 90 percent — and schooling begins at the age of five or six, although the USA has a coverage rate of almost 50 percent among four-year-olds. High coverage rates prevail up to the age of 14 in both countries; that is, practically all children aged between 5 and 14 are enrolled in school systems in both Canada and the USA.

While the rates are high in both the USA and Canada, they drop off when compulsory education comes to an end, which takes place at the ages of 17 and 16, respectively. Thus, the coverage rate in the USA begins to fall after the age of 16, reaching a level of below 50 percent among 19-year-olds. Similarly, in Canada, where obligatory education ends at the age of 16, the coverage rate among 18-year-olds is less than 50 percent.

With regard to the numbers of primary school pupils who are held back to repeat academic years, the two subregions — Latin America and the Caribbean — display different patterns. While more than half the Caribbean nations reporting this indicator (five out of eight) have total primary repeat rates of less than 5 percent, the same can be said of only six of the 16 Latin American countries. There is also less dispersion among the Caribbean nations: a minimum of zero percent is reported in Anguilla, compared with a top level of twelve percent in Haiti. The variation in repeat rates among countries reflects not only the efficiency of the systems, but also the different education policies and models that, after due debate, have emerged and been put in place. In some cases, therefore, not only does using repetition indicators distort international comparability; it also undermines analyses of how the quality of a country’s education system has evolved.

Resources

Investment in human capital is a key factor in personal and social development as well as in national economic development and in establishing equality of opportunities. Investment in education is therefore of vital importance, in that it is a determining factor behind the kind of education services provided and their quality standards.

Average total public spending across the region, as a percentage of GDP, amounts to 4.2 percent. This speaks of the efforts being made by countries to fund their education systems. Ten countries (Jamaica, Aruba, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Canada, Barbados, Panama, the USA, Brazil, and Paraguay) have spending levels above that average, while spending in eleven nations (Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras) is below the average level. Nicaragua’s spending is equal to the average. Notably, there are differences between Latin America and the Caribbean. Spending in the Caribbean (5.1%) is higher the Latin American average (3.8%). Irregularities are, however, found in both subregions: the levels in Costa Rica and Bolivia are even higher than the Caribbean average, while Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda are the only

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Caribbean countries where this public spending indicator is lower than the average level in Latin America.

The proportion of total public spending earmarked for education also varies within the region. The average stands at around 15 percent. Seven countries have above-average rates (Peru, Paraguay, Aruba, Bermuda, Guatemala, Panama, and Chile), while another eight countries (Anguilla, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Uruguay, and Brazil) have below-average levels. The figure for Barbados is equal to the regional average. In general, the Caribbean nations invest a lower proportion of their public spending in education.

Per-pupil spending is distributed unevenly among the different levels of education. Thus, with respect to preschool education, Argentina is the country that spends the most public funds per pupil — around eight times as much as Bolivia, which is the nation that invests the least in that level, in USD-PPP terms. Only two countries (Argentina and Costa Rica) have per-pupil spending rates in excess of USD-PPP $1000 per annum, while three countries (Peru, El Salvador, and Bolivia) spend less than USD-PPP $330 per pupil per year.

As regards primary education, per-pupil spending in Argentina — once again, the country with the highest investment levels — is almost five times that of Bolivia. Only three countries (Argentina, Costa Rica, and Chile) have annual per-pupil spending levels in excess of USD-PPP $1000, while another three countries (Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia) spend less than USD-PPP $500.

Per-pupil spending tends to be higher in secondary education than at other levels. Costa Rica’s per-pupil spending level is the region’s highest and is eight times that of Bolivia. Four countries (Costa Rica, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile) spend more than USD-PPP $1000 per pupil per year, whereas Peru, El Salvador, and Bolivia spend less than $500.

Investing in human resources means investing in education professionals. Although the fact that teachers are important in improving the quality of education is receiving increasing acceptance, this perception is not, in most cases, backed up by sufficient resources.

Pupil-to-teacher ratios indicate the extent of countries’ investments in human resources. At the preschool level, pupil-teacher numbers range from seven in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands to 45 in Haiti. At primary schools, the figure ranges from nine in Bermuda to 38 in Guatemala. Eleven countries have fewer than 20 pupils per teacher; all of these, with the exception of Colombia, are in the Caribbean; 16 countries have between 20 and 30 pupils per teacher; and seven countries average more than 30 pupils for every teacher. At the secondary level, the range is practically the same as in primary education: it varies from seven pupils per teacher in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands to 36 in Brazil.

In theory, greater numbers of pupils per teacher mean lower education costs, since expenditure on personnel accounts for the lion’s share of education spending. The relationship is, however, more complex than that. Although higher numbers of pupils per teacher could be associated with increased coverage, in practice this is not the case. Thus, at the primary level, countries such as Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti, and Jamaica, which have the highest pupil-to-teacher ratios (above 30), also have the lowest coverage rates.

There is a tendency toward interpreting low pupil-teacher ratios as being synonymous with better quality education. This matter is still, however, subject to debate. While some studies

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indicate that lower pupil-to-teacher figures help improve quality, other research reveals that there is no correlation between those two variables.

The wages paid to teachers and the likelihood of pay increases over their professional lives are the main material incentives for attracting professionals into the education system and keeping them there. At the primary level, Mexico is the country where teachers’ starting salaries represent the highest proportion of per capita GDP (1.2%), while lowest level is found in Uruguay (0.6%). Although this indicator is comparable in terms of the effort countries have to make to remunerate their teachers, these wage levels also depend on how rich a given country is. In other words, although as a proportion of per capita GDP, a teacher’s starting salary in the USA (0.8%) is lower than in Chile (1.1%), in PPP dollars the teacher in the USA earns more than her Chilean colleague because the USA’s per capita GDP, in PPP dollars, is more than four times that of Chile.

Quality

Although most of the countries of both Latin America and the Caribbean have developed national quality evaluation systems, using internationally comparable indicators, no information is available for the region as a whole. In general, what are available are isolated experiences with participating in standardized tests that are intended to assess the quality of different education systems and were designed by either countries or institutions from the developed world.

While the region’s most developed countries — Canada and the USA — have regularly participated in international studies, only two Latin American countries (Chile and Colombia) and none from the Caribbean have taken part in internationally comparable evaluation efforts. Thus, Canada and the USA have participated in studies conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (such as the TIMSS), which are intended to assess the performance of primary and secondary pupils in mathematics and science, as well as in other efforts developed by the OECD (e.g., IALS) intended to measure literacy rates among the adult population. Both Colombia and Chile have participated in the TIMSS (in 1994 and 1998, respectively), while only Chile has been involved in the IALS (in 1998).

Not only are there differences in countries’ participation in international studies, the results they have obtained are also different. In the TIMSS study conducted in 1994-95, Colombia — the only Latin America country involved — ranked 40 out of 41 countries in mathematics and 38 out of 39 in science. Meanwhile, Canada finished 18th and 10th in mathematics and science, respectively, with the USA finishing 28th and 9th. Chile participated in the 1998-99 TIMSS test and ranked 35 out of 38 in both science and mathematics; in the same test, Canada was placed 10th and 14th, respectively, and the USA ranked 19th and 18th. These results were largely mirrored in the IALS literacy study: Chile, the only Latin American country to participate, took the last place of 22 in all the areas analyzed, while Canada finished among the first ten and the USA among the first fifteen. This indicates not only the disparities that exist within the region, but also the shortfalls that still prevail between the developed world and the developing countries.

The only regional experiment was the Latin American Education Quality Evaluation Laboratory, carried out by UNESCO/OREALC in 1997 and involving Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and

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Venezuela. This study analyzed the mathematics and language skills of pupils in the third and fourth grades of primary education.

It revealed no major differences in achievement levels among the countries, with the exception of Cuba. In general, the richest countries, or those with higher levels of per capita GDP, enjoyed better results, in both mathematics and language skills.

New initiatives for assessing quality are currently being developed. Most of these, like their predecessors, involve studies designed by international organizations from developed countries; however, in contrast to what has happened in the past, a larger number of the region’s countries have displayed interest in participating. For example, PISA3— an international study developed by the OECD in conjunction with its member states, intended to analyze how knowledge and skill acquisition among 15-year-olds enables them to play a role in society — already involves such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru.

At the same time, Brazil — the coordinator of the quality assessment project of the Second Summit of the Americas — has proposed developing a Hemispheric Forum for Educational Evaluation, in order to plan, articulate, and disseminate different initiatives in this area.

Social Impact

Historically, Latin America and the Caribbean have used two indicators to assess the social impact of education: the literacy rate among the adult population, and the total number of years spent at school.

Around 41 million people are illiterate in 24 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, representing some 13 percent of those countries’ populations aged 15 and over. This rate ranges from two percent in Guyana to more than 50 percent in Haiti; in other words, while in Guyana approximately two out of every ten people are unable to read and write, this figure rises to five out of every ten in Haiti. These figures indicate the dissimilarities that exist in literacy rates among our countries. Countries with literacy rates comparable to those of the world’s most developed nations exist alongside nations where more than a third of the adult population is illiterate.

Not only are there major differences in literacy rates among countries; disparities also exist within nations. Trinidad and Tobago, for example, has an illiteracy rate of two percent; however, 70 percent of these illiterate people are women. In fact, women still account for most of the region’s illiterates. In 1997, illiteracy among women represented 55 percent of total illiteracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, with rates of 60 percent or more in Peru, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador.

All our countries have lower illiteracy rates among their younger citizens than among those who are older. In certain countries, however, this generation gap is more pronounced. In Chile, although illiteracy among the adult population runs at five percent, among young people aged between 15 to 24 years it is less than one percent. A different situation prevails in Nicaragua, where the adult illiteracy rate is 33 percent, compared to 27 percent among young people. This means that in Nicaragua, and in Haiti and Guatemala, similar levels of illiteracy are still passed on to successive generations.

3 Programme for International Student Assessment.

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HJ Rawlinson, 01/03/-1,

Sic. Cf: “two percent” in previous sentence.

Some studies have shown that, in spite of their low levels of absolute illiteracy, most developed countries suffer from a skills shortage among their adult populations. According to an OECD study, only slightly more than half the populations of the USA and Canada managed to attain the minimum level the Organization was looking for. This suggests that moving from the concept of absolute illiteracy to that of functional illiteracy reveals the educational weaknesses present in the region and underscores the need to use indicators that better reflect the illiteracy problem.

The educational profile of the population is one indicator of the education system’s achievements and it showcases the educational efforts made by countries. Chile and Argentina are the only countries in the region where most of the adult population has at least ten years of schooling (58 and 51 percent, respectively); this means that those countries have made sustained efforts over time to provide education for the majority of their populations. In contrast, in the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, and Honduras, fewer than one-third of the population have attained that level of education. In the remaining countries, the proportion varies between 43% (Uruguay) and 34% (Costa Rica).

Although on average no country provides ten years or more of schooling, the elite sectors in most of them — that is, the richest ten percent of the population — reach levels in excess of that figure. Comparing figures for years spent at school reveals great differences from one country to the next. For example, Argentina’s average (9.4 years of schooling) is equal to the level attained by the richest ten percent in Honduras and even higher than the level attained by the same elite ten percent in Nicaragua. Looking at things a different way, the level attained by the poorest ten percent in Argentina (seven years) is equal to the national average in Peru.

If twelve years of formal education is taken as being the “minimum,” Argentina has the highest proportion of adults with that level of schooling (23%), followed by Chile (22%); this means that even the countries with the region’s highest levels of education are far from providing universal coverage at the level that ECLAC defines as the minimum (12 years). Moreover, in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Brazil, where less than ten percent of the population between the ages of 25 and 59 have twelve years of schooling, it is less likely that the vast majority of people will be able to escape poverty unless current education conditions change.

The education profile of the younger generation — 15- to 24-year-olds — reflects a similar pattern to the one found among those aged 25 to 59: Chile (61%) and Argentina (54%) are the only countries where more than half of the young people have attended school for at least ten years. In contrast, in countries like the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica, less than one-third of the population have ten years of schooling or more. All the countries reported a drop in the proportion of individuals with five years’ schooling or less, meaning that the education profile across the entire region has improved. Similarly, the countries’ education profiles have evolved at different rates, which is probably due in part to their different education policies. While over the space of one generation Chile managed a 71-percent reduction in the proportion of its people with five yeas of formal education or less, over the same period the corresponding reduction in Brazil was only 26 percent.

Unlike the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the USA and Canada have vast experience in analyzing the social impact of education in economic terms. Thus, those countries’ indicators for employment and unemployment rates broken down by educational levels help explain the benefits that higher levels of education offer individuals and society alike.

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The social impact of education can be seen in many areas beyond the job market, such as health, social engagement, institutional development, and social and individual welfare. For that reason, in conjunction with Mexico’s Ibero-American University (UIA), the PRIE is developing indicators that are relevant to the region and that reflect the different components of the social impact of education.

Conclusions and Challenges Facing the PRIE

An analysis of the 25 indicators covered by the PRIE reveals three issues of particular importance as regards the region’s education situation.

First of all, a couple of matters relating to coverage and schooling levels should be addressed. Schooling levels in Latin America are low, beneath the minimum level of 12 years that, according to ECLAC, is required for people to escape from poverty. Similarly, high levels of absolute illiteracy still exist.

While universal access to primary education has practically become a reality, major additional efforts are still needed to ensure attainment of the goal, set by the Summit of the Americas for the year 2010, of universal access and permanence, ensuring that every member of the population manages to complete that level of education and receives quality services in doing so.

In turn, the goal that at least 75 percent of young people should progress to quality secondary education, with rising levels of successful conclusion, will demand major efforts, consistency over time, and sustainability since drop-out rates in primary schools and the supply of secondary education — generally concentrated in urban areas — means that secondary school is only attended by 54 percent of Latin Americans of eligible age. Finally, offering lifelong educational opportunities for the general population is a more challenging goal for all the region’s countries.

Secondly, particular emphasis must be placed on the fact that the progress made in education is spread out very irregularly across the region. This inequality is associated both with the differences in our countries’ relative levels of development and with the massive internal social inequalities that characterize the Americas and, in particular, Latin America.

Countries with high incomes, better coverage (in secondary education), and longer average periods of formal education exist alongside poor countries with high dependency indexes and low levels of per capita wealth. The latter group face massive limitations in the availability of the resources needed to undertake the substantive changes required to raise coverage and quality levels to the extent needed to overcome the high rates of absolute illiteracy found among their populations. Failing to address this situation would further heighten the differences between countries and keep some of them from attaining the goals set for 2010.

Thirdly, we must stress the fact that there are countries that have performed admirably in the field of education in spite of severe constraints in terms of their relative development. For example, Bolivia is one of the region’s poorest countries but still achieves coverage levels in both primary and secondary education that are similar to those of such relatively richer countries as Brazil and Uruguay. Similarly, Bolivia has attained levels of juvenile literacy that are comparable to those of Argentina and Chile.

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Jamaica is notable among the nations of the Caribbean subregion, with coverage rates similar to those of The Bahamas (one of the richest countries in the Caribbean). Like Bolivia, Jamaica has low illiteracy levels among its young people.

Both countries have focused their efforts and priorities on the education sector and, in spite of serious economic constraints, have invested a large portion of their GDP in education (5.6% and 7.3%, respectively), levels which are higher than the regional average. Jamaica and Bolivia’s better education results in some way reflect the fact that these two countries have a more equitable distribution of income than the remaining countries in the region. Thus, Jamaica is the second most equitable country in the Americas (after Canada), with a better Gini coefficient than the USA. Meanwhile, Bolivia’s figure is close to that of the USA. Better income distribution has allowed progress with greater equality.

This poses a major challenge for those countries that have the economic wherewithal for improving their education systems but still do not advance, or do so only slowly, thereby endangering the future of the generations that are to come.

What has been described above sets two types of challenges: one related to the goals set by the Summit of the Americas, and another related to the development of comparable indictors under the aegis of the PRIE.

In pursuit of the Summit goals, it is necessary and vital that we make a collective effort to narrow the gaps that exist both within our countries and between them. This challenge involves governments and international cooperation and finance agencies, which can support regional strategies aimed at bringing about greater equality in the region.

As regards the creation of comparable indicators, the experience earned during the first year of the PRIE’s work underscores a set of tasks in different fields. One first line of action would be to improve the design of the 25 indicators originally provided for the project. There have been difficulties in measuring these, caused either by lacks of information, failures to understand definitions and concepts, and problems in gathering data, and all this hinders international comparability.

In addition, the technical assistance provided to the countries also needs to be strengthened. It should be aimed at the countries with the most serious weaknesses in data collection, and it should respond to the countries’ specific demands and needs. In addition, this also requires strengthening the joint work underway with UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics.

Also necessary will be the design of new indicators to better reflect progress in education and the pursuit of the commitments acquired at the Summit of the Americas.

Last but not least, one great challenge facing the PRIE involves encouraging the region’s countries to make greater use of information and indicators in setting and assessing education policy.

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APPENDIX VI:

HORIZONTAL COOPERATION MECHANISMS AMONG COUNTRIES

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SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.6/01Punta del Este, Uruguay September 2001

Original: Spanish

HORIZONTAL COOPERATION MECHANISM AMONG COUNTRIES

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HORIZONTAL COOPERATION MECHANISM AMONG COUNTRIES

An Effective Way to Use Educational Funds and Resources in the Hemisphere

Sofialeticia Morales Garza José Salgado

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to explain how horizontal cooperation among countries will permit better use of resources through the sharing and acquisition of knowledge regarding the educational best practices in the Hemisphere, and, in so doing, will ensure the participation of all member countries through cooperation strategies.

To that end, emphasis will be placed on the importance of developing a horizontal cooperation mechanism among countries, pursuant to the mandate of the Third Summit of the Americas and the guidelines of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI). A brief analysis will be done of the use of the funds in the education account of the Special Multilateral Fund of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (FEMCIDI) from 1996 to date. This information will demonstrate the need to establish a new mechanism that will permit optimization of the resources allocated by the countries to education, through the sharing of educational best practices. Following this, a description will be provided of the criteria used for the selection of these practices and the need to implement systematization and evaluation strategies that lead to the establishment of a "Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs."

The proposed horizontal cooperation mechanism is based on the identification and transfer of best practices, and, above all, on the capacity to develop in other contexts, taking into account the lessons learned, other activities that are based on previous activities and are aimed at addressing a number of the points included in the Plan of Action for Education of the Third Summit of the Americas.

Education in the context of the Summits of the Americas

The development of education at all levels has been the central focus of the Summits. At the Second Summit of the Americas, the countries stated that:

The Hemisphere's commitment to education is reflected in the sweeping reform processes encompassing all levels of educational systems, and is based on broad consensus with respect to the problems confronting education and the shared commitment and effort of societies as a whole to overcome them. These processes are based on the principles of equity, quality, relevance and efficiency. Equity is defined as the creation of conditions that ensure that all people have the opportunity to receive quality education services, thereby significantly reducing the effects of inequalities based on socio-economic status, disability and ethnic, cultural and gender discrimination. Quality implies the achievement of high levels of cognitive development, skills, capabilities and ethical attitudes. Relevance is defined as the ability of an educational system to meet the needs and aspirations of society as a whole, taking into account its social, cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. Lastly, efficiency is defined as the provision of adequate resources, used optimally, in order to enhance educational achievements.4

4 Plan of Action, Second Summit of the Americas (pp. 1)

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In addition, in the Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas the countries recognized that:

.. education is the key to strengthening democratic institutions, promoting the development of human potential, equality and understanding among our peoples, as well as sustaining economic growth and reducing poverty.5

These commitments in the Hemispheric Plan of Action on Education of the Third Summit of the Americas contain mandates that are to be executed by the countries with the assistance of the Organization of American States, acting as the Technical Secretariat.

Furthermore, the countries pledged to implement the Plan of Action:

… which constitutes a body of concrete initiatives intended to promote the overall development of the countries of the Hemisphere and ensure access to and improve the quality of education, promote and strengthen democracy and the respect for human rights, deepen economic integration and free trade and eradicate poverty and discrimination. We have adopted this Plan of Action conscious that all the initiatives are inter-related and equally important to the attainment of our common endeavor.6

Key substantive areas that set forth the educational commitments of the Third Summit of the Americas

The educational priorities contained in the Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas set forth five key areas that encapsulate the work to be performed. The objective is not to simplify the work to be done but rather to find a way to systematize the best educational practices in the Hemisphere. Some of the programs contributed by the countries as best practices correspond to more than one key area, and while their ordering provides us with an indication of the emphasis placed on the program, it in no way diminishes the importance of the action to be taken.

Key Area 1: Quality and Equity

This key area provides a synthesis of the points contained in the Plan of Action that address the commitments to equity that are aimed at meeting the educational needs of the poorest sectors, through action designed to improve the quality of education. The principles of equity and quality are inextricably linked, and are necessary to minimize the risk of providing substandard educational options. The commitment to equity can be genuinely addressed only if it is based on models that permit quality education to be offered to everyone. Furthermore, the recent effort to develop quality indicators and standards must focus on socio-cultural and economic differences in order to meet the commitments to improve the quality of education in an equitable manner.

Key Area 2: Management, Decentralization, Social Participation, and Updating of Teaching Skills

5 Plan of Action, Third Summit of the Americas (pp. 34)6 Plan of Action, Second Summit of the Americas (pp. 1)

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The management of schools, together with the processes of decentralization of educational systems, has strengthened social participation strategies in educational activities and is providing educational institutions with new opportunities. The updating of teaching skills seeks to transform the educational sphere from one that is authoritarian and hierarchical into one that is composed of genuine communities of learning, where the use of information and communication technologies serves as a tool that fosters education and where equity with quality and quality that incorporates equity are a priority.

Key Area 3: Youth, secondary education, and certification of job skills

While the efforts of the past two decades--- to achieve universal primary education in the 1980s and universal basic education in the 1990s--- have permitted a greater number of young people to complete their basic education, it is unfortunate that very few of these people have access to higher education. The two cycles of secondary education (the one that usually corresponds to the last phase of basic education and the one that constitutes the preparatory phase for higher education) should be redefined not only as a preparatory phase for higher education but as a preparatory phase for employment.

Job-related training is providing an opportunity for the certification of skills acquired in the empirical sphere and for building learning processes. These processes should be reinforced through training in civics and ethics, while providing the skills needed in the working world, thereby facilitating incorporation into productive life.

Key Area 4: Higher education, science and technology, and academic mobility

In recent decades, priority has been given to basic education, while the strengthening of higher education from a financial and technical standpoint has been neglected. Public universities are facing severe crises that call for a redefinition of their role. Financing, the need to improve the quality of education, and the establishment of mechanisms that permit poorer students to have access to university are the challenges, in terms of equity and quality, faced by the universities of the region. Moreover, it is very important to promote science and technology at all educational levels. To that end, there is a critical need to strengthen these areas in the higher education sphere through research and innovation. Academic mobility would permit the establishment of ties among nations and encourage job-related certification in a Hemisphere where information is shared and generated.

Key Area 5: New technologies serving education

The Third Summit of the Americas is stressing connectivity as a cross-sectional area. New information and communications technologies are becoming instruments for offering quality educational services to the more scattered and poorer population sectors. Persons involved in the educational system (students, parents, teachers, directors, and supervisors) can receive pedagogical and teaching assistance through the computer, CD ROM, television, satellite transmission, and radio. These tools help improve the educational quality of the teaching and learning processes.

New technologies are proving to be valuable educational tool. However, consideration must be given to the manner in which these new technologies are narrowing the technological gap and responding to the commitment to equity in education, particularly in light of the fact that at the moment, only a very small percentage of students has access to these technologies. While guaranteeing equity through investment in the technological infrastructure of schools is

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very important, it should be borne in mind that education budgets require investment in other priority areas such as updating teaching skills, building learning communities, and new pedagogical strategies.

These five priority areas respond to the mandates of the Third Summit of the Americas and permit a more accurate identification of the practices, projects, and methodologies that meet the specific needs of countries.

Horizontal cooperation

With a view to the more effective achievement of the goals defined, the Third Summit provided for the need to establish horizontal and multilateral cooperation mechanisms. To that end, the Heads of State and Government proposed:

… to establish, in light of the fundamental importance of mobilizing resources to support sustained investment in education at all levels, a cooperative mechanism to promote the development of productive partnerships among governments and with regional and international organizations and the MDBs.7

Also, the CIDI Strategic Plan for Partnership for Development (1997-2001) identifies the need for a system of cooperation among member countries of the Organization of American States. The objectives of the plan are:

1. To strengthen hemispheric dialogue for development.2. To strengthen cooperation for development among institutions operating in the

Hemisphere.3. To increase the exchange of knowledge, information, and experiences. 4. To strengthen and diversify the financing for partnership for development. 5. To strengthen regional and subregional integration.8

That same document states that the CIDI will function as:

… a catalyst to promote new types of cooperation among OAS member states institutions and between them and other institutions of the inter-American system, by giving preference to multilateral projects, supporting project implementation through appropriate national institutions. National projects should continue to be supported when they have a significant impact in terms of strengthening the development of the country in question, especially if they permit it to participate more actively in multinational projects or increase the chance that other international cooperation agencies, including the relevant financial institutions, will participate, or if the project also benefits other member states.

The CIDI strategy has three complementary spheres of action:

• To serve as a forum for inter-American dialogue on development.• To serve as a catalyst for and promoter of programs, projects and other cooperation

activities, and

7 Plan of Action, Third Summit of the Americas (pp 35).8 1997-2001 Strategic Plan for Partnership for Development. Executive Secretariat for Integral Development. Organization of American States. Washington, D.C. (pp. 4-5).

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• To serve as a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of information, experiences, and knowledge.9

Clearly, the most important mechanism for achieving the goals of the Summits of the Americas is the establishment of mechanisms for horizontal cooperation. Consequently, the Third Summit of the Americas, under the heading: Finance, Multilateral Cooperation Strategies, and Follow-up, instructs:

.. the OAS and requests the IDB, the World Bank, and United Nations Economic Commission on Latin-American and the Caribbean (ECLAC), among other institutions, to use the mechanisms within their scope to develop and strengthen regional cooperation in areas such as distance education, using, among other means, satellite technology; internships and exchange programs; the development and use of information technology for education; the updating of education statistics; and quality assessment, while striving to ensure that this cooperation is in keeping with the specific needs of each country. 10

These documents provide an indication of permanent horizontal cooperation mechanisms, horizontal monitoring systems, and a mechanism for interagency cooperation.

The Summit also assigns to the Organization of American States responsibility for:

… through ministerial meetings and other mechanisms being developed by member States in the framework of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), collaboration and joint effort in the Hemisphere and, to that end, to convene, in consultation with the coordinating countries, technical consultation forums of the countries in the Hemisphere in order to contribute to the implementation of the commitments included in this Chapter of the Plan of Action.11

All these documents underscore the need to establish permanent horizontal cooperation mechanisms among the countries that permit them to define, systematize, and transfer their best practices to other countries and regions. This process also avoids the duplication of projects in different countries and during different periods. Furthermore, it ensures the most efficient use of financial resources by preventing funds from being spread too thin. Horizontal cooperation is aimed at improving educational systems and the impact that country projects have on the specific needs of countries and the entire region.

An analysis of projects funded by the FEMCIDI account in the area of education since 1996 reveals the financing trends in the different areas of the Hemisphere and the different priorities that have been financed.

Overview of cooperation through FEMCIDI

Between the time of its establishment in 1996 and the year 2000, FEMCIDI has sponsored 96 projects in the area of education, amounting to $12,722,554. These projects have been distributed among the different subregions in a manner that was not always equitable, and only rarely were efforts made to achieve horizontal cooperation among countries. When an in-depth analysis is done of multilateral strategies, this exercise is limited, in most

9 Ibid.10 Second Summit of the Americas. Plan of Action.11 Ibid.

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cases, to the organization by the coordinating country of an event in which representatives of the other countries are invited to participate or to draft materials that will be later shared with several countries.

Another level of analysis involves observation of the type of projects that have been financed over the years. We note that four projects, corresponding to education for democracy projects, have been funded. Although in some instances one component of the project included the invitation of members of other countries to seminars, in general terms, it cannot be said that a great effort was made by OAS countries or responsible entities of the OAS to disseminate the results and expand the experience by involving other countries. i The same thing happened with projects involving teacher training, the use of technologies to benefit education, and the preparation of educational materials.ii

In analyzing the manner in which support was provided for the different educational priorities set forth in the Second and Third Summits of the Americas, we realize that priority was given to projects aimed at offering access and quality alternatives in the area of early and basic education to the poorest groups. Also noted was the scant attention paid to the education of young people, secondary education, and lifelong education. The lack of financing for higher education, as well as strategies involving the joint participation of the civil society in the educational process was also observed.

A more in-depth analysis (Table 3) sheds light on the areas receiving the lowest funding. Not only did the certification of job skills, social participation, decentralization, and secondary education receive a small amount of funds, but fewer projects were financed in these areas. This was not the case with new technologies projects, which received more than 1.5 million dollars.

What is alarming and to some extent significant in terms of the importance of the projects financed is the fact that the availability of total FEMCIDI funds has fallen from a high of 16 million dollars to 7 million dollars. In this same analysis, we note that the total percentage of FEMCIDI funds available for education has fallen from 29.3% to 16.37%.

This analysis demonstrates the need to establish a system of horizontal cooperation that responds effectively to the educational needs of the Hemisphere, achieves a more equitable distribution among the different subregions, and optimizes the use of the technical, human, financial, and material resources in the region, in addition to achieving horizontal cooperation among countries, thereby serving as seed funds for implementing new initiatives and mechanisms for systematizing and evaluating educational programs that are being strengthened over time in the different countries, but are not accompanied by evaluation strategies that allow their impact to be gauged.

The challenge facing the OAS is to use the funds of the FEMCIDI education account in such a way that this account responds to national priorities and serve as seed funds for promoting greater horizontal cooperation. This can be achieved only if the persons making decisions regarding the use of resources are the ones representing the Ministries of Education, and if they agree to use these funds to strengthen hemispheric horizontal cooperation. In addition, consideration must be given to the fact that financing needs to be based on the ability of projects to be applied, after adjustment, in other regions and the ability of the executing agency to share lessons learned with persons from other countries.

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A Horizontal Cooperation Mechanism among Countries: Permanent Portfolio for Consolidated Programs

The need for educational programs that meet the objectives of the Second and Third Summits of the Americas, which have been proven effective and are measurable, and which, above all, address the priorities expressed by the Ministers of Education of the Hemisphere and foster cooperation among countries, leads us to seek the most effective way of creating a system which, in addition to reorienting use of the FEMCIDI education account, provides us with a strategy for enhancing the quality of the educational programs in the region. It is against this backdrop that the horizontal cooperation mechanism based on the Permanent Portfolio of Consolidated Programs is being proposed.

What is being proposed, therefore, is the implementation of a horizontal cooperation mechanism that seeks to identify, in each country, what have been called "Consolidated Programs." This mechanism will permit Ministers and their technical groups to identify, at any time, those countries in the Hemisphere with experience in a specific area and to establish dialogue and a working and cooperative relationship with them.

There is an awareness that no program can be copied from one context to another. This is not the objective of horizontal cooperation; what is being sought is information regarding the experiences of other countries rather than information regarding the things that have gone wrong in each case, and the reinvention of these practices, methodologies, and educational strategies, their selective acquisition, and their adaptation to needs and requirements.

Despite the fact that in the past decade an effort has been made to identify "innovative and successful or 'best practices' programs," this has been done through international organizations and NGOs but almost never through the ministries themselves, using a process of discussion intended to share these programs with other ministries of education, based on a desire to strengthen horizontal cooperation strategies among countries.

Consolidated Programs are educational programs that have been developed in the national sphere and which: respond to the challenges identified at the Third Summit of the Americas, have been proven effective from both a qualitative and quantitative standpoint in terms of fulfillment of their objectives, have been strengthened over five or more years of operation and have lasted beyond one government's term in office, have generated educational materials for all the different actors involved in the educational process, have been evaluated internally and externally or have actors who are willing to engage in process of systematization and participatory evaluation, and have persons running these programs who are willing to offer technical assistance to the interested countries.

Consolidated Programs can, in addition, generate proposals or guidelines for comparative research in countries. Using an empirical basis, they will support the formulation and evaluation of policies and programs. They will also permit integration and collaborative work among the different sectors and actors (the different Ministries, academic groups, trade unions, parents' associations, NGOs, etc.).

The following elements support the selection of consolidated programs:

1. They are effective in terms of responding to a number of educational challenges expressed at the Second or Third Summits of the Americas and their effectiveness can be demonstrated over time.

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2. They are conducted at the national level; that is, they do not represent a "micro" experience applicable to two or three schools; instead, they were developed and implemented based on the challenges faced by each nation.

3. They are integrated into the national education system and do not represent a marginal educational experience that would be very difficult to incorporate at the different educational levels and by the actors involved (supervisors, directors, teachers, etc.).

4. They have withstood the test of time, not only from an evaluation standpoint, but have been in operation for more than five years and have demonstrated their ability to withstand turbulent political and economic times and have developed strategies for addressing the different types of problems encountered.

5. They are sustainable, that is, although they have received external financing initially, they are currently maintained through funds provided by the Ministry of Education and it is unlikely that economic crises would cause them to fold.

6. They are flexible, that is, they can be transformed and improved upon internally,

when this is deemed necessary, and externally, in order to respond to different needs and contexts.

Consolidated Programs will be ranked based on each substantive key area containing a synthesis of the educational mandates of the Third Summit of the Americas. To that end, a file card will first be prepared, which permits organization of the information and a description of the program, its objectives, and impact. This exercise will be conducted by the Unit for Social Development and Education of the OAS, in its capacity as the technical secretariat for the process, in order to develop a permanent portfolio that serves as a source of information for the Ministers of Education and establishes a different horizontal cooperation strategy among the countries. A supply and demand form will be prepared of the Consolidated Programs offered by each Ministry of Education and of those that are interested in acquiring more in-depth knowledge and implementing pilot projects.

Strategy for implementing the horizontal cooperation mechanism

After the initial ordering of the Consolidated Programs using the card file established for that purpose and completion of the supply and demand form, the Consolidated Programs in which the greatest interest has been shown, from the point of view of information and implementation, will be selected. The following steps will then be taken:

1. A directory of national and international specialists who work with the pertinent groups from the Ministry at the different levels of government will be prepared, in order to organize and evaluate the experience in a participatory manner. Each Ministry of Education will select, depending on the scope of the project, one or two national researchers and one or two international researchers who will work on that process for one year.

2. Two persons from the countries interested in obtaining more information about the program and adopting it as a pilot program in their country will also be selected to attend a "study and design training session." The selection of persons to be trained will be made by mutual agreement with the Minister of Education, inasmuch as the persons selected will have to

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enjoy political and technical support in order to coordinate the pilot experience and adapt it to conditions in their own countries.

3. The entire process will take place over the course of one year and national and international researchers will also assist the persons being trained with the analysis of the experience, critical aspects of the adaptation thereof to conditions in their countries, and the design of a pilot project that permits a brief overview to be provided of the essential components of the source Consolidated Program and the changes to be made in order to bring it in line with the needs and requirements of the context in which the pilot project will be implemented. The design of the pilot experience will have to take into account evaluation criteria and strategies for measuring the short-, medium-, and long-term impact.

4. At the conclusion of the training session and design of the pilot project, the recipient country of the Consolidated Program that will implement the project on an experimental basis will receive a small amount of seed capital for its execution.

5. One year after operation, a joint seminar will be organized in which the technical staff responsible for the source consolidated program will participate and the groups responsible for the pilot projects that are based on the source Consolidated Program will analyze and evaluate the course of action to be taken.

6. As a result of the optimal utilization of the funds in the FEMCIDI education account, this would be an ongoing strategy that could be made available to all countries, based on their interests and needs.

Through this mechanism, a study can be done of the practical aspects, a critical review done of the actions taken, the process can be reviewed and reshaped, light can be shed on obscure areas, a comparison can be done of the initial program proposal and actual accomplishments, and the different concepts and practices analysed. This mechanism permits identification of strengths and weaknesses, accomplishments and challenges, aspects that facilitate and hinder the process, favourable and unfavourable factors (benefits and disadvantages), lessons learned during the process, weaknesses of the proposal and weaknesses in terms of execution, what might and might not be expected, and research needs that are emerging in a hemispheric context.

Conclusion

The educational needs of the region are immense. Great challenges are faced in terms of providing the poorest sectors of the population with educational programs that meet the commitment of equity with quality. The training of teaching staff is a priority, as is the transformation of schools into learning communities in which school management is more transparent and committed and the participation of the entire society in the educational task is a reality. Priority should also be given to technological advances and information as a way of enhancing the quality of education of all children and young people, regardless of their socio-economic origin and geographic location.

These challenges cannot be met without a concerted effort on the part of governments, civil society, and other entities that are interested in human development through education. More importantly, there are practices that have been implemented successfully in order to address these problems.

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For this reason, many comprehensive mechanisms are needed to confront effectively the challenges of the region in the area of education. Horizontal cooperation, interagency cooperation, ongoing surveillance, and consolidated programs are mechanisms which, when combined, can produce favorable results. Each of these mechanisms was derived from the Third Summit and responds directly to its Plan of Action. The Unit for Social Development and Education firmly believes that it is in this manner that we can face jointly the educational challenges of the entire region.

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APPENDIX VII:

THE EDUCATIONAL PORTAL OF THE AMERICAS

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Original: Spanish

THE EDUCATIONAL PORTAL OF THE AMERICAS (educoas.org)

Informative Document

Department of Information Technology for Human DevelopmentInter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development

Organization of American StatesWashington, DCSeptember 2001

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Executive SummaryThe purpose of this paper is to present general information about the Educational

Portal of the Americas. The Portal is an initiative developed by the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development of the Organization of American States, within the framework of the Cooperation Fund of the United States, to carry out the mandates emanating from the Third Summit of the Americas and the Connectivity Agenda for the Americas.

The Educational Portal is an online service to disseminate information on the best quality educational and training opportunities available in distance education. Through this instrument, it is hoped that access to knowledge will be greatly expanded, thereby allowing the people of the Hemisphere to take active part in the technological revolution that is significantly transforming their lives and societies. At the same time, the Portal will make available the various programs and fellowships offered by the OAS, as well as other informational services.

Within this framework, and to offer background information regarding the development of this initiative, a general overview of the mandates of the Summit and the Connectivity Agenda with regard to information technologies is also offered.

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The last decade has seen many events and trends, but of all of them the most

significant has been the rapid development and profound impact of technology on the

everyday lives of people. However, the advent of new possibilities in communication

and access to information has not taken place at the same rate throughout the world

and has left many sectors of the Hemisphere vulnerable, among them Latin America

and the Caribbean. This vulnerability is the result of an asymmetric development that is

evidenced by the limitations to and lack of available resources that could lead to a

greater level of connectivity and, consequently, more competitiveness in the area of

technology.

The problem that we are referring to cannot be looked at from only one angle—

represented in terms of high or low levels of access to technology—but also requires, to

be fully understood and analyzed, a comprehensive vision that considers the interaction

of social actors and historical circumstances. In this sense, it is important to understand

the dual effects that the implementation of technology had on the countries of the

region. While the increased public access to information facilitated by the spread of

technology has aided in the growth of transparency and more accountability from

governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, it has also added to the “brain drain”

of talent from the region. The developed countries with a greater head start in

information technology, and consequently a more developed technological

infrastructure, offer the allure of more economic and professional opportunities to

talented professionals from developing countries, whose own societies cannot match

such promise. The vicious circle of unequal growth within the Hemisphere seen so

often in other historical contexts —here termed a “digital divide” by many leaders and

institutions-- reappears once more. What cannot be denied however, is the promise

and opportunity that this same technology provides to break not only this trend, but also

those trends that have deeper historical roots, such as educational gaps between the

developed and undeveloped countries of the regions.

It is with these competing elements of disparity and potential in mind that the

Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD) of the Organization of

American States (OAS) is developing initiatives, based on the Plan of Action stemming

from the Third Summit of the Americas and the resulting Connectivity Agenda for the

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Americas, to contribute to development in the Hemisphere. These initiatives aim to

contribute to the strengthening, expansion and consolidation of those services

dedicated to human resources training, allowing for the arrival of a new knowledge-

based society.

These services were created under the influence of three principal ideas. The

first of these is that the process of increasing connectivity in the Americas is greatly

dependent upon education. Secondly, there is a general consensus that access to

knowledge increases and strengthens educational levels, and at the same time

augments the possibilities for better socioeconomic performance. The last idea is that

the role of education takes on added relevance for individuals and governments when

one considers how closely access to better educational and professional opportunities

has become intertwined with the rise of information technology.

The Heads of State and of Government of the Americas met to discuss this and

other important issues facing the Hemisphere during the Summit of the Americas, held

in Quebec in May 2001. The issue of “connectivity” played an important role on the

Summit Agenda, as the region’s leaders have recognized that technology allows

individuals to further their personal growth and development, and that their development

subsequently leads to the sustainable economic growth and social development of all of

the countries of the region.

The resulting Connectivity Agenda for the Americas reflects the Hemisphere’s

commitment to promote increased access to knowledge and improved flows of

communication for all of the region’s inhabitants. It proposes to enable all those in our

societies to use information and communications technologies to build networks, share

ideas, and establish more effective partnerships with government and the private sector

that will enable them to participate more fully in the political, social and economic

development of their respective societies.

The Connectivity Agenda underscores the importance of providing affordable,

universal access to telecommunications infrastructure and promoting the modernization

of the telecommunications sector, working jointly with the private sector in deploying

these services whenever possible. Likewise, the Agenda highlights the need for

developing new methods for facilitating access to knowledge, particularly for the

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region’s children and youth, and to incorporate technology into national education

systems and learning environments. In this same vein, attention will be given to broaden

technical expertise through information technology training programs with a focus on

training educators. As a whole, the Agenda is an instrument that encourages

governments to collaborate with academic institutions and private-sector businesses to

promote capacity building and human resources development through information and

communication technologies.

A strong correlation exists between the Connectivity Agenda and the Education

component of the Plan of Action that was agreed upon during the same Summit

meeting. The Heads of State and of Government of the Americas, in recognition of the

fact that education is the key to strengthening democratic institutions, promoting the

development of human potential, equality and understanding among our peoples, as

well as sustaining economic growth and reducing poverty, established a series of

mandates to ensure that, among other things, quality education is made available to all.

The OAS has been assigned a critical role in fulfilling the Summit mandates with

regard to the promotion and development of human resources in the Americas. In

particular, the OAS has been entrusted with promoting access to quality basic education

in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as promoting alternative educational

methods to meet the needs of disadvantaged segments of the population or of those

excluded from formal education systems.

In addition, the OAS shall support and promote lifelong learning for students of all

ages, and shall enhance the performance of teachers by providing them with

opportunities for ongoing professional development and by designing more flexible

teaching methods and strategies using information and communication technologies. In

short, the OAS shall promote access by teachers, students and administrators to new

information and communications technologies applied to education, through training

geared toward new teaching approaches, support for development of networks and

sustained strengthening of information clearinghouses, in order to reduce the

knowledge gap and the digital divide within and between societies in the Hemisphere.

These mandates are reinforced in CIDI’s Strategic Plan for Partnership for

Development, as well as the IACD’s Business Plan, both of which set forth the need to

85

employ information technology in cooperation programs and activities related to human

resources development and training. In response, the IACD has created the

Educational Portal of the Americas, a web site to provide the people of the Americas –

particularly those living in remote areas – with greater access to educational and

training opportunities.

In order to illustrate just exactly how the Educational Portal of the Americas will

fulfill its role in facilitating connectivity in the Americas, we have included a brief

description of the tool to be used to accomplish the task at hand.

The first question to consider is “What is a portal?” Anyone who has ever

“surfed” the Internet has probably used a portal of some kind. A portal could be defined

as a browser-based application that allows the user to gain access to, interact with,

make decisions about, and utilize a wide variety of information regardless of the user’s

virtual location, the location of the information, or the format in which the information is

stored. The most familiar kinds of portals are those web sites that offer an array of

features—most typically news services, message boards, reference tools, e-mail, and

shopping—that serve as an entry point, or portal, to the vast offerings of the Internet.

While most portals share the aforementioned features, there is no set list of features

required to be considered a portal. Like so many other aspects of the Internet, portals

have evolved in a short time into a wide variety of types for many uses. They provide

information on a plethora of topics, including local, national, and worldwide newswires;

corporate coverage; stock updates; sports, weather, and entertainment news; reference

tools such as maps, and phone and e-mail directories; as well as virtual shopping malls

offering just about any product imaginable.

Most portals are organized into channels, or categories, on topics that are related

to the function of that particular portal. A channel then collates a range of elements,

both on and off the portal site, in a single location. For example, an educational portal

might include features of course offerings, scholarship opportunities, related educational

sites, e-mail access, chats and a message board, on-line papers, a search mechanism,

and news on educational programs, all on one accessible area.

Another question to pose is “What kind of portals are there?” Some nine different

web-based applications have been identified that could be considered portals. Among

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the various uses and roles that these portals may serve include: connecting different

classes of data; providing access to business management information; facilitating

consumer purchases; delivering training to employees; furnishing lists and links to

resources, services and products; supporting the communication among the members

of an organization in an intranet capacity; and serving as a resource for expert advice,

decisions, opinions and support. There are several excellent examples of these portals

in our region: the Educational Portal established by the Fundación Chile; that of the

Secretary of Public Education of Mexico, organized jointly with ILCE and its network of

schools; and Educ.ar, to mention just a few.

Although most portals will not utilize all of these functions, those that employ a

combination of them are referred to as Knowledge Portals. The primary role of a

Knowledge Portal is to retrieve specific information from an information technology

system and present it based on the preferences and profiles of the particular user; allow

for the personalization and navigation features that allows the user to customize their

searches for their maximum benefit; and facilitate the communication and collaboration

between those who have and those who need the information. The Educational Portal

of the Americas, the features and characteristics of which will be discussed later, could

be defined as a Knowledge Portal.

Another question that is frequently asked is “Why should one use a portal?” Just

as there are many types of portals, so are there many uses. The primary objective for

the implementation of a portal is to create a user-friendly environment that users can

easily navigate in order to find the information they specifically need to more quickly

perform desired tasks, make decisions, or utilize retrieved information. The one

common feature among all of these formats is that they allow the user the convenience

of having the relative chaos of the Internet amassed onto one site.

An additional feature that makes portals a valuable resource is their adaptability

to individual users. Indeed, through the use of personalization techniques, portals have

evolved to deliver precisely the information one needs, just the way one wants it. For

example, a portal can provide conveniences such as local weather reports or movie

listings by remembering the user’s zip code. Pertinent information about the portal user

is usually obtained through a registration process whereby the user enters personal

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information into a data bank. This data is then used in order to personalize the

searches the user performs, or to notify the individual of relevant news or interests

based on the profile that the user has previously provided. A portal allows the user the

flexibility to tailor their searches and the use of the results of those searchers in such a

way that simply was not possible prior to the advent of portal access. In this way, the

wealth of information available can be individualized for more efficient and effective use.

A portal also provides a virtual community via the use of email and chat-type

forums. These allow users of the same portal to exchange ideas about portal content

and subject matter regardless of where they are located. In this way a portal connects

individuals on yet another level, an interpersonal one. In so doing, portals further bridge

the gap between peoples of the region, facilitating the exchange of and access to

knowledge.

Many universities and other institutions of higher learning have also come to

realize the importance of increasing their students’ access to knowledge. This

realization has led to the growth of distance learning programs, which allow students to

pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as professional training, through

the Internet or other technological means (satellite television, audiovisual, etc.) from

their own home or office, at their own schedules, and at their own pace.

While the percentage of Latin Americans and Caribbeans who use the Internet is

still smaller than in more developed countries, studies indicate that there was a 788%

increase in Internet use in the Latin American region over the past several. This spread

of the Internet to Latin America and the Caribbean now holds the potential for more

students in the region to have unprecedented access to high-quality educational

programs. To capitalize on this potential, the IACD has created an instrument to

promote and stimulate human resources development through the use of the Internet.

This instrument is the Educational Portal of the Americas.

The Educational Portal of the Americas is a clearinghouse of information for

students, teachers, researchers, government officials and others who would like to

access quality information regarding the Hemisphere’s best distance learning programs

and scholarship opportunities from one central location.

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Like the other Knowledge Portals described previously, the Educational Portal

offers its users a combination of various services. First, it provides interface with a large

quantity of information by offering direct links to over 3,500 distance learning programs

from the Americas and Europe; access to scholarships available from various

organizations, institutions, and countries; specialized courses for updating teacher

training skills, particularly at the primary and secondary levels; news briefs on

educational events and services; and links to other sites of interest for the user.

Second, the Portal employs user profiling in its registration process to provide

personalized searches where the information sought may be tailored to the needs and

preferences of the user. This feature includes the options of choosing among academic

subject areas of interest, academic levels, country, institution, and language. Third,

users have the capacity to communicate with other users, via chats and forums, on a

variety of human resources issues. Lastly, the Portal facilitates access to expert advice

through the inclusion of a Best Practices section, whereby users can obtain and

exchange information regarding innovative and successful educational practices carried

out in the region. The Educational Portal fosters connectivity in that it creates a regional

community of users and providers of educational services within the Hemisphere by

linking the professional, economic and institutional capabilities of each country.

To ensure accuracy, as well as quality of content, all courses and programs of

study included on the Portal are periodically reviewed and certified by a Blue Ribbon

Committee comprised of OAS Inter-American Prize winners in Education and other

renowned experts in the field. Although there are no costs involved to log on and

navigate the Portal’s various resources, the participating universities and institutions

may charge tuition and fees to register in the programs themselves.

While the Educational Portal of the Americas was created for all individuals interested in

improving their personal and/or professional development, the IACD has identified a core group

of users that will directly benefit from the Portal’s services:

Students Persons who would like to pursue secondary or university programs, as

well as those who may have begun programs but were unable to complete

their studies, and need to ascertain the range of available options and

institutions offering the programs and courses that are of their interest.

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Employees Working professionals or technicians who need to quickly acquire

technical skills and access practical training to advance in their career.

Corporate Users Persons who have professional training that aspire to improve their

abilities and focus on an area of expertise, and corporations that seek to

provide these opportunities to their employees.

Teachers Teachers performing duties at the basic, intermediate and secondary

levels needing to update their knowledge and improve their teaching skills.

Scholars Members of the academic community holding advanced degrees who

need to update their knowledge or complement and enhance areas of

expertise.

Adults Adults who seek to enrich their personal growth through continuing

studies.

In accordance with the mandates to stimulate the role of the private sector in the

development of information technology infrastructure and services, the IACD has sought the

participation of numerous leading businesses and educational institutions in the creation and

development of the Educational Portal, among them: Microsoft Corporation, the Cooperation

Fund of the United States, Centro de Cooperación Regional para la Educación y Formación de

Adultos en América Latina y el Caribe (CREFAL), Latin American Institute for Educational

Communication (ILCE), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Inter-American Commission

of Telecommunications (CITEL), Technological Institute of Monterrey (ITESM) and its Virtual

University, Library of Congress of the United States, National University of Quilmes, National

University of Distance Education of Spain (UNED), University of New Mexico (UNM), U.S.

Department of Education, Foundation of the Universidad de la Producción y del Trabajo en la

República Argentina, the Ibero-American Science and Technology in Education Consortium

(ISTEC), Ibero-American Association of Distance Education (AIESAD), and the Connectivity

Institute for the Americas established by the Quebec Summit. The Portal has been announced

at the Summit of the Americas in Canada earlier this year, and at the OAS General Assembly in

Costa Rica. It will also be launched in its experimental version in both Spanish and English at

the Second Meeting of Educational Ministers of the Americas under the auspices of CIDI to be

held in Punta del Este, Uruguay in September of 2001. Beginning in 2002, the Portal will be

available in the four official languages of the OAS.

In summary, the Educational Portal of the Americas addresses the Connectivity Agenda

of the Americas as well as the Plan of Action of the OAS/IACD resulting from the Third Summit

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of the Americas on a number of fronts. First, the Educational Portal is a vehicle that invests in

the development of human potential as it significantly augments the capacity to access

knowledge and offers a solution to improve the dispersal of that knowledge on a global scale. It

will in principle promote lifelong learning and new opportunities to partake in the knowledge-

based society by way of a flexible service delivery through its mission to provide the people of

the Hemisphere with greater access to quality educational programs regardless of their location.

In providing users with entry to a vast clearinghouse of distance and on-line education programs

the Portal enables them to access information on post-secondary studies and learning

opportunities offered across the Hemisphere, just as the provision of information on OAS

fellowships will promote access to quality basic education for all. The Portal’s focus and

dedication to teacher training and formation via on-line courses enhance the performance of

teachers by furnishing opportunities for ongoing professional development that uses new

information and communication technologies as their strategic foundation. These services will

deliver greater support to the program of connectivity as they will allow for the sharing of

vocational experiences among professionals from many countries. The Portal’s personalized

format and its communicative components such as e-mail, chats, forums, and links of interest

will establish networks of individuals in various societies that will promote the exchange of

information, ideas and best practices as well as participation and dialog between the public

sector and other sectors that will increase the knowledge of other cultures and languages and

generally enhance communication among peoples of the Hemisphere.

In its design, delivery of services and dedication, the Educational Portal of the Americas

serves as an invaluable resource in realizing the Connectivity Agenda of the Americas and the

continuing efforts of the OAS and the IACD to stimulate and promote development among the

countries and peoples of the Hemisphere.

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APPENDIX VIII:

OPPORTUNITY AREAS FOR COOPERATION AMONG INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES

92

SECOND MEETING OF MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OEA/Ser.K/V.5.124-25 September 2001 CIDI/RME/doc.8/01Punta del Este, Uruguay September 2001

Original: Spanish

OPPORTUNITY AREAS FOR COOPERATION AMONG INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES

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EDUCATION PLAN OF ACTION OF THE THIRD SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AND FINANCE AGENCIES

AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY, BY SUBJECT AREASUBJEC

T ARE

A

Inter-American Development Bank World Bank Organization of Ibero-American

States for Education, Science and Culture

Andres Bello Agreement

UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the

Caribbean

United Nations

Children's Fund

United Nations

Population Fund

EJE

1

EQ

UIT

Y

A priority of the Bank in all its operations. Most recent examples include projects in Honduras, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Brazil, and Bolivia. Concessional funding for evaluation of rural postprimary education in Colombia, the Fe y Alegria (faith and happiness) system, and distance education.

World Bank priority: poverty and education (gender, indigenous peoples, at-risk groups). Preschool programs in Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama.

Formation of the network of preschool administrators to devise a program on this subject. Literacy and basic adult education programs in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay.

Priority: general basic education. Support to Andres Bello Agreement countries for their participation in UNESCO/OREALC programs.

Childhood education. Education of youth and adults. Inclusive education. International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA).

Priorities according to each national cooperation plan. Support for the formulation of national universal education plans.

Contributed to Spanish-language literacy efforts among Quechua speakers in Bolivia, with a gender perspective.

QU

AL

ITY

Another focus of the Bank's education program. Projects with quality-based objectives are under way in Peru, Ecuador, The Bahamas, Mexico, and Guyana, among many others. Concessional funding to support Argentina's Institute for the Development of Educational Quality (IDECE). Encourages countries to join international testing systems.

Identification of the traits of successful schools in the region. Evaluation seminars with USAID.

Development of quality indicators for early education. Strengthening educational evaluation capabilities in Central America (PISA and the evaluation systems).

Support to Andres Bello Agreement countries for their participation in UNESCO/OREALC programs.

Regional Educational Indicators Project, with Chile. Latin American Laboratory for Evaluating the Quality of Education. Educational Innovation Network. Strengthening the countries' evaluation capabilities. Promoting participation by Latin American countries in international studies (ALL).

Regional cooperation opportunities: definition of indicators on the child development situation and their use at the local level. Documenting experiences and exchange.

In collaboration with UNESCO, preparation of educational materials and educational approach to population and sexuality issues.

SUB

JEC

T 2

AD

MIN

IST

RA

TIO

N, D

EC

EN

TR

AL

IZA

TIO

N, C

OM

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NIT

Y

PAR

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IPA

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N, A

ND

TE

AC

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EFR

ESH

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ING

The IDB strategy recognizes the importance of efficient and effective administration in this sector. Many of its projects include funding for improved administration at all levels (from schools to ministries of education; projects in Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago), teacher training and refreshers courses (in almost all projects now under way, for example: Peru, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil), and, where appropriate, decentralization (Colombia and Jamaica). Together with the World Bank, has supported EDUCO in El Salvador, as well as the preparation and publication of analytical studies on performance and the teaching profession. Supports a PREAL/IDB internship programs for school teachers and administrators, including the identification of best teacher training practices. Inter-American Teacher Training Program. Supports Brazil in holding the Conference on Teachers.

Has supported EDUCO in El Salvador and similar programs in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. Administrator certification system, in Bahía, involving training and periodic recertification.

A 2003-2006 teacher development cooperation plan is under way. Ibero-American School Network. Internships for administrators of teacher training institutions.

Administers and coordinates an internship program for teachers, involving Andres Bellos Agreement countries. School systems in transformation: the paradigm of schools as learning organisms. Has developed a table of equivalencies for the transfer of basic education students among A. B. Agreement countries. Program to train teachers in classroom and community research.

School administrator training. Study of teacher conflicts. Study on effects of decentralization on the school.

Support for the mobilization and participation of society, community, and family for effective exercise of the right to education. Documentation of decentralization processes.

Approaches, methods, and materials for sex and reproduction education in the new school program.

94

SUB

JEC

T 3

YO

UT

H, S

EC

ON

DA

RY

ED

UC

AT

ION

, AN

D

CE

RT

IFIC

AT

ION

OF

LA

BO

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KIL

LS

The IDB has a long history of supporting vocational training and technical education systems. It has supported Youth Chile and Project Youth in Argentina, both innovative projects. It has projects under way in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. A project in Venezuela, recently concluded, supported youth training and certification. It is supporting improvements in the quality, equity, and availability of secondary education in the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. It also supports a regional policy dialogue on secondary school reform in the region. It has a pilot project to develop multimedia science and math teaching materials for secondary schools in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. Donation for youth training in information technology.

Pilot project Life Long Learning in Chile (making the education system more flexible).

Vocational education: specific cooperation program (summit program). Project on innovative experiments in vocational education (Post-IBERFOP). Subregional projects on secondary and vocational education (MERCOSUR, Andean region, Central America).

Permanent forum on secondary education. Formal and nonformal education on sexuality and reproduction.

Internet chat rooms: "Voices of youth." Right of participation and education of adolescents, according to national cooperation plan.

Formal and nonformal education on sexuality and reproduction.

SUB

JEC

T 4

HIG

HE

R E

DU

CA

TIO

N, S

CIE

NC

E A

ND

T

EC

HN

OL

OG

Y, A

ND

AC

AD

EM

IC

The IDB is conducting a tertiary education program in Nicaragua. It has 12 science and technology projects under way in countries such as Guatemala and Nicaragua, and in countries such as Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. Conducted a seminar on the viability of the community college model. Has published an education strategy agreed upon by rectors and decision-makers throughout the region. Supports the Connectivity Program for Excellence in Higher Education, including the development of quality standards and accreditation systems and a virtual resource center. Strategy to support the development of science and technology in various countries.

Science and technology projects in Brazil. Regional higher education projexts in the Caribbean.

Exchange of undergraduate students among Ibero-American universities. Training in science, technology, and society for middle school teachers. Support for national science and technology innovation plans.

Analysis of systems for the international accreditation of university programs is under way. Formation of the Network of Teacher Training Universities.

UNESCO science education professorship. Project: Science Education for Everyone.

SUB

JEC

T 5

NE

W T

EC

HN

OL

OG

IES

AT

TH

E

SER

VIC

E O

F E

DU

CA

TIO

N

To date, the IDB has supported the use of new education technologies in 15 education-sector projects. It also supports improvements in the content of Internet and multimedia educational offerings. Following the Santiago Summit, it launched the RIVED project for production of electronic science and math teaching materials for secondary schools, together with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. Announced at the Québec Summit an Inter-American Teacher Training Program that will include the design, production, and implementation of a regional distance training program, mostly at the secondary level.

Millennium Science Institute Program (Chile and Venezuela)

Coordination of efforts to prepare Ibero-American Education Portal. Performance of diagnostic study on classroom use of technologies (Costa Rica). Analysis of distance learning teaching models.

Incorporation of new technologies in teacher training programs

Projects on means and technologies for transforming education

Internet page: "Teachers Talking about Learning" (Spanish translation in progress)

Support for community radio

95

APPENDIX IX:

TOWARD INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN EDUCATIONFOR THE INTEGRATION OF THE AMERICAS

96


Original: Spanish

TOWARD INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIONIN EDUCATION

FOR THE INTEGRATION OF THE AMERICAS

NOEL F. MGINN

97

TOWARD INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIONIN EDUCATION

FOR THE INTEGRATION OF THE AMERICAS12

Noel F. McGinn

Dr. Noel McGinn received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. He has devoted his professional life to education, with special interest in the Americas and their educational systems. He has been professor and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, among other US, Chilean and Mexican prestigious institutions. His work has been focused on educational planning, strengthening institutions, and democracy. He has been a policy advisor to more than twenty country governments and international assistance agencies –such as the World Bank and the Harvard Institute for International Development- on broad strategies for improvement of efficiency and equity on public education systems. As a researcher, he has advanced concepts and methodologies on educational planning, the utilization of information for planning, decentralization, and on the links between globalization and education. In 1998, the Organization of American States awarded him with the Andres Bello Inter-American Prize for education to McGinn, distinguishing him as an outstanding educator in the hemisphere. At present times he is continues working as a consultant. Among his most renown works are the following publications: La Asignación de Recursos a la Educación Pública en México: Un Proceso Técnico en un Contexto Político (co-written with G. Orozco and S. Street), 1982; Framing Questions, Constructing Answers: Linking Research with Education Policy for Developing Countries (co-written with A. Borden), 1995; Confronting Future Challenges: educational Information, Research and Decision-Making co-written with F. Reimers), 1995; Informed Dialogue: Using Research to Shape Educational Policy Around the World (co-written with F. Reimers), 1997.

The ideas, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the journal are not necessarily those of the OAS or of its Member States. The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors.

Copyright © 2001 by OEA/OAS. All rights reserved. This publication may only be reproduced partially or in its entirety with the source clearly indicated

12 Paper commissioned by the OAS’s Unit for Social Development and Education to be presented at the Meeting of Education Ministers of the Americas, Punta del Este, September 24-25, 2001.

98

Executive Summary

International cooperation can take two major forms: aid, and collaboration.

The effects of aid vary according to the orientation of the aid-giving institution. Until recently the dominant perspective on aid has been that aid-giving agencies could make up for deficiencies in the receiving country or organization. In general there has been a consensus among those sharing this point of view with respect to deficiencies in education, and the best ways to overcome them. That is, these agencies have had a common perspective on the "best practices" required to improve education around the world. Aid has been given in a form intended to change the policies and practices of receiving countries, and to direct them toward a general world model of education.

One consequence of this pressure for uniformization has been a general reduction in the diversity of education in the Americas in terms of structure, process and content, accompanied by a modest improvement in overall levels of coverage and quality. At the same time, however, disparities within and between countries, in terms of coverage and quality, have grown larger. Throughout the Americas criticisms of education are increasingly strident and similar. These criticisms deal more with issues of purpose and direction of education and less with levels of funding and distribution of resources.

Almost all aid has been given to individual countries: relatively little aid has been given to support programs of collaboration between countries for the joint resolution of common problems. The dominant philosophy of aid with its insistence on application of "best practices" invented elsewhere has distracted countries and the region from exploration of new, more situationally-appropriate forms and content of education. The dominant form of international cooperation in education in the Americas has lagged behind in the race toward globalization in other aspects of human life.

Regional collaboration will continue for some time to require aid and assistance from richer to poorer countries and from outside the Americas. What is proposed here are ways to organize and direct that aid to contribute to greater collaboration among the countries of the Americas.

New forms of aid should:

increase the variety of policy options from which governments (and national and regional communities) can choose;

de-link funding by bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies from the process of identification of policy options;

increase the diversity of stakeholders that participate in the process of policy formulation and decision-making.

Specific mechanisms to accomplish this include:

reorientation of aid agencies to encourage diversity of perspectives on strategies for development;

de-linking of funding from choice among policy options; and development of national and regional consensus about the role for education in the 21st

century.

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Synthesis

The Problem—Failing Schools

Important gains have been made in education in the Americas during the past 50 years. Overall, on every measure of quantity and quality of inputs, schools today are better than they were half a century ago. Teachers have received more training, classes are smaller, more students have textbooks and they are of better quality, curriculum have been revised in accord with developments in cognitive psychology and advances in science. Literacy rates have declined notably and the average level of education in the population has grown steadily.

Despite this growth, every sector of society in the Americas complains about public education. Schools and universities are criticized for inefficiency in use of resources, low levels of achievement of their students, poor preparation for employment, high dropout rates, and a generally inadequate intellectual, civic and moral formation. iii Education's gains have not been sufficient to resolve longstanding social and economic problems. Schools leave us ill prepared to meet future challenges and exploit future opportunities. The system efficient in selecting leaders of relatively stable political, economic, social and religious organizations is today a curious antique living beyond its time of usefulness.

Failures North and South

Even after high levels of spending and decades of reform, the performance of schools in the United States trails that of other industrialized nations. One consequence has been a serious erosion of confidence in public education, and a rupture of the national consensus about how best to educate children. In desperation, politicians and educators that once championed community control of schools now urge either privatization or centralization.

In Latin America and the Caribbean schools’ performances resembles that of a malnourished person barely able to function, bereft of the energy required to escape from starvation, easily distracted, with diminished memory and reasoning ability. Systems of education are underfinanced in both absolute and relative terms. Not only poor, the region’s systems are inefficient in use of funds they have. Expensive investments in infrastructure, for example management information systems, go to waste because funds are not allocated for their staffing and maintenance. Inefficiency and insufficient resources draw a vicious circle that contributes to increased criticism of public education, evaporating the political courage required for breakthrough solutions.

Low levels of spending on public education go hand in hand with the largest proportion of students in private schools in the world. Many children spend years in schools so poor in quality that they have little lasting effect. Use of public funds to subsidize private education results in at best minor improvements in quality and tends to worsen the already unequal distribution of access to schooling.iv

Finally, the dominant technology of instruction in schools is inadequate to the challenges of the 21st century. This technology defines teachers as the primary source of knowledge for students, and places them in relatively isolated work sites that raise the cost of on-the-job training, professional meetings and workshops. Participation in the world economy, meanwhile, has distorted salaries and drawn qualified people away from teaching. Improvement of the quality of the teaching force will require significant increases in teacher salaries, increasing the unit cost of

100

education. The resulting cost burden makes simultaneous expansion of access and improvement of quality difficult if not impossible.

The problems of education arise in governments' decisions about finance, operation, and content. But governments do not stand alone. Within each country they reflect the ambitions and beliefs of some mix of stakeholders. In addition, other countries and international agencies influence national policies, in what is called international cooperation. The next section describes briefly two major forms of cooperation and their consequences for education.

Can International Cooperation Help?

Profound problems continue even after years of international cooperation among the countries of the Americas. This cooperation has taken two major forms, aid (sometimes called development assistance), and collaboration.

Aid is characterized by a one-way flow of resources, information, ideas, personnel, from one country (or international organization) to a receiving country. Collaboration, on the other hand, requires that countries exchange resources, ideas, information and personnel to reach a shared objective. The objective of aid is to change the receiving country; the objective of collaboration is to change all participants.

Over the past 40 years aid has come to obscure collaboration, and particular varieties of aid have had pronounced effects on national education policies.

At best, aid as international cooperation has made insignificant contributions to the improvement (as distinct from expansion) of education.

At worst, the forms and content of international cooperation to date have contributed to the intractability of the problems of education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and have failed to benefit aid-givers.

In addition, some forms of aid have levied high opportunity costs. The continued reliance of many countries in the region on external assistance represents a failure to develop endogenous capacity for the improvement of education.

A Solution

This paper argues for increased emphasis on collaboration as the preferred form of international cooperation. Aid-giving in itself is not undesirable but its modes and methods should be changed. No country in modern times has developed on its own and all countries have benefited from relationships with others. But cooperation is neither a simple, nor an unchanging concept. Countries are made up of a variety of social actors acting in time and space. Cooperation between countries occurs not just in relationships between governments, but also involves non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations. Over time and especially in recent years not only have new actors appeared on the stage of international cooperation, but also older actors have changed their roles and goals. New forms of aid can support collaborative projects.

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AID AS A FORM OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

There are two basic perspectives on aid. In the first, or deficit perspective, aid is offered because the other party is seen as lacking resources the giver can provide. The receiver may be deficient in capital, technologies, institutional capacity, or personnel.

A second perspective on aid argues that otherwise sufficient resources are not being used properly. The objective of aid is then to change internal processes and structures in a country. Aid can, it is claimed, support presumed forces of "modernization," and can compel shifts in policies. This is known as the decision approach to aid. In last 50 years there has been a gradual shift from the deficit to the decision model for justifying assistance.

During the 1980s global aid to education was about 9 per cent of all bilateral and multilateral aid. Primary education received only 5 per cent of this total. One-third of aid for primary education came from bilateral donors. The World Bank contributed (worldwide) 27 percent and IDB 9 per cent. About 30 percent of aid to primary education went to budgetary assistance, 23 per cent to construction, and 13 per cent to food.v

Over time European countries have increased the proportion of their GDP that is spent on

aid. In recent years both the United States and Japan have decreased their contributions to aid, but Japan remains the largest single donor. Among the OECD countries the United States spends the lowest proportion of its GDP on aid. Despite the promises made at the World Conference on Education for All, total aid for education is less after the Conference than before, for all regions of the world except Latin America.

Consequence of Aid—Uniformization

The long-term effect of aid has been a reduction of differences, in structures, policies, beliefs and customs.vi This process of uniformization in education has a long history, linked directly with colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries, more recently with the emergence of supranational organizations. Over time, all the education systems of the world have come to look much like one another, in terms of curriculum content, pedagogical process, and management and governance.

Reduction of variety reduces the capacity of the Americas, as a region, to respond to the challenges and opportunities of globalization. No country can anticipate what kind of education will be required in the future; making all our systems the same now reduces the chances of discovering those new forms of education that will be most effective in the future.

Aid or Assistance from Bilateral and Multilateral Organizations

Criticism of the aid process is long-standing but there has been little systematic study of the impact of aid on receiving countries and their education systems.vii There are, however, detailed and systematic evaluations of aid in general.viii Aid sometimes "works" and sometimes does not; what "works" varies from country to country, and according to the particular definition of effectiveness that is used. Sometimes aid has negative consequences for the receiving country.ix

In addition, aid has a high direct cost and contributes to developing country debt. The provision of the assistance can have a high opportunity cost; it may inhibit the development of indigenous capacity to solve problems.

Aid and Assistance from NGOs

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Non-governmental organizations of all types were active in international cooperation long before the bilateral and multilateral agencies were created. Catholic and Protestant organizations in Europe and the Americas began to provide various forms of aid before Independence and continue to be active today.x In most cases governments in their home countries encouraged these organizations. Governments in Europe often provided subsidies to their NGOs, while the U.S. government did not. In both cases, however, their governments saw the NGOs as carriers of national values and culture and, in some cases, the reports of their workers in the field helped to inform economic and military decisions by the government.

Collusion of interests between the government and NGOs is less in Canada, and in Europe than it is in the United States. Even for those NGOs that receive public funds, government restrictions are less, and governments make less explicit use of the organizations to achieve state political objectives. At the same time, proportionately more of the private-sector organizations in Canada and Europe have explicit political objectives, and more from time to time formally criticize their governments' policies and practices with regard to other countries. As a consequence these NGOs are more likely to cooperate with non-governmental (and even anti-government) educational institutions in the aid receiving countries.

Aid by Philanthropic Foundations

The U. S. foundations no longer are large contributors to education in other countries. There have been at least three major studies of how this form of international cooperation affected the development of social science in the receiving countries but these were written in the late 1970s.xi

They are useful in terms of cautions for the future rather than diagnoses of the present.

The most constructive observations argue that the application of knowledge is always conditioned by context, varying by time and space. Contact between knowledge producers in North and South is of great importance for the diffusion of methodologies that can be applied in varying contexts, and hence it is important to support joint ventures governed by reciprocal and symmetrical relationships. The success of these efforts will depend on the existence of multiple channels of funding for knowledge production, to insure the survival of diversity in knowledge as much as in nature.xii

Aid from Transnational Corporations

The strong criticisms of education in all the countries of the Americas have been accompanied by increased efforts by private corporations to influence educational policy and practice. In many countries, business-education alliances are on the upswing. This aid is most often given to private institutions or individual public institutions. For example, in Mexico domestic and foreign corporations participate in decision-making for public technical-vocational schools.

Most "cooperation" by corporations is between and within corporations rather than with public education institutions. A critical and yet unresolved issue is whether corporate involvement will have a uniformizing effect on education, or whether it will contribute to diversity in content and methodology.

Aid Mediated through Educational Institutions

In higher education, cooperation occurs primarily between institutions. The Fulbright Program of the United States, for example, is funded by the U. S. government but most decisions about

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exchanges are made by faculty members from universities. The Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities combines grants from the U. S. government with contributions by universities, and operates without government intervention.

Programs of this kind are less likely to have the uniformizing effects attributed to the programs promoted earlier by U. S. foundations. The diversity in what is gained through cooperation is greater when aid comes from or is controlled directly by educational institutions rather than by agents of governments or philanthropic foundations. This is more likely to be true for universities that enjoy a high degree of autonomy.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN THE FORM OF COLLABORATION

Some institutions enter into what is called horizontal cooperation to distinguish it from the vertical, one-direction-of-influence relationships often associated with bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies. Some types of horizontal cooperation can also be called collaboration, because participants labor together in pursuit of a shared objective.

Many of the horizontal cooperation or collaborative efforts in education in the Americas were initiated through aid from bilateral or multilateral agencies or NGOs.

Collaborative projects not involving aid agencies occur but are rare and difficult to document. Collaboration often continues once external funding dries up because institutions and individuals find great benefit in working together.

Examples of Collaboration in Higher Education

The Columbus Project is an initiative of the association of European universities (CRE) with support from the European Community and UNESCO. The project includes exchange of students in Europe in the Erasmus program, funding of meetings with rectors of Latin American universities, field trips of European and Latin American rectors to each others' institutions, training workshops, policy papers, and other activities. Universities in Spain have developed a series of collaborative programs with Latin America institutions called MUTIS (Movilidad Universitaria de Tercer Ciclo para Iberoamerica). The International Cooperation Agency of Spain (AECI) maintains a web-page in Mexico (aeci.org.mx/mutis) that advertises joint research projects, scholarships for study in Spain, links with corporations, and Latin American and Spanish universities. Each of these projects has spun off other kinds of collaboration.

Rectors and presidents of universities in Canada, Mexico and the United States began meeting during the discussions leading up to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. The meeting were initially funded through an American foundation with support from the United States Information Agency. The objective of the meetings was to establish grounds for the universities to cooperate, rather than compete, once NAFTA was signed. Several meetings have been held since that time, with the objective of establishing course and diploma equivalencies. Out of these meetings have come agreements for joint projects between sub-sets of institutions.

Obstacles to Collaboration

Joint efforts require a certain level of stability in participating institutions. Participating institutions must have a fairly sophisticated management capacity. The main objective of

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collaboration is to share unique capacities, but differences generate tensions. Participants have to simultaneously accept the legitimacy of differences and work together to build new structures and procedures that transcend them.

The development of international cooperation among the universities of the European Union required three major steps:

A long period of dialogue finally resulting in consensus as to the importance of linking universities through supranational institutions;

Clear differences in economic, social and cultural as well as educational qualities, defined as potential for complementarities; and

Recognition by political, corporate and social leaders of the central contribution to be made by universities in the development of Europe.

Contributing to this process were efforts in improvement of institutional management,

resulting in gradual raising of the quality of programs, and greater effort to disseminate the knowledge produced in universities.

Collaboration in Dissemination of Research on Education

A major obstacle to the development of knowledge about other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean has been access to research about their education systems. A number of efforts have been made to develop networks that link researchers together through conferences, newsletters, bulletins and occasional monographs describing research activities and findings. Each of these efforts has contributed to the development of research in the region, but none of them has survived for a long period. All the failed networks were dependent on a central organization to fund research and maintain the dissemination device.xiii

The activities that grew into the Latin American Network of Education Research Centers

(REDUC) began in the early 1970s as a national effort by one center. REDUC collects and publishes abstracts of published and unpublished documents on education in Latin America. Aid from various bilateral and multilateral agencies enabled inclusion of other research centers; today REDUC includes 26 public and private research centers in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. At present the collection includes almost 30,000 documents available on microfiche and interactive CD-ROM.xiv

The critical elements in the survival and success of REDUC as an example of international cooperation appear to have been its:

decision to not filter the documents entered into its collection, that is, to validate the efforts of colleagues in other centers and countries;

constant efforts to forge connections, to expand the network to include education research centers in many countries;

concern for utilization of the product of REDUC by a diverse audience but especially policy makers.

Other Instances of Collaboration

Collaboration also takes place at the level of national government agencies. For example, the ministers of education of the Americas meet annually to discuss common problems and solutions. In recent years these meetings have ended with agreements to share their experiences and to engage in joint actions.xv Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay have

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made, as part of MERCOSUR, agreements affecting curriculum and degree equivalency in their educational institutions. Librarians in Mexico and the United States have been cooperating on literacy programs and expansion of their collections.

GLOBALIZATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

The concept globalization is a metaphor for the vast changes taking place in relationships between the countries of the world. There is a growing consensus that the latest stage in globalization includes a major shift in the dominant paradigm for industrial production, and the predication of a new model for development.xvi These changes have great significance for both education and international cooperation.

The new model for development emphasizes:

competition in an open world economy, enhanced by continuous improvements in productivity;

internal political stability through generation of consensus around national objectives and strategies, and legitimated through greater social and economic equity;

increased personal security based on a more equitable access to education, health and other elements of social welfare;

and higher levels of informed political participation through the expansion of non-governmental organizations.

The education required to support these changes cannot be produced merely by more money for today’s schools. Instead there must be a fundamental paradigm shift in education equivalent to that underway in economics and politics. Some elements of that paradigm have already appeared:

recognition of the decreasing life span of useful knowledge in a rapidly changing world; recognition that individuals construct their own knowledge, in part through interpretation of

others’ knowledge but primarily through action and reflection; a shift from schools and teachers as sources of knowledge to facilitators of learning through

action; reduced distance between sites of learning and sites of action (home, office, factory,

meeting room, etc.); greater emphasis on learning through action as a community process involving not just

students and teachers; and the importance of broad social participation in the construction of a new consensus about

education.xvii

Education should contribute to realization of the social and economic conditions required for stability and consensus. These conditions include:

increased individual and collective capacity for social organization and economic production and

increased equity in access to quality education.

The construction of a new consensus, and the elaboration of the new paradigm, can be facilitated through and requires greater cooperation among the countries of the Americas. This should take two forms:

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1. changes in how aid is given, and 2. more frequent collaboration between countries.

A NEW ERA IN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FOR EDUCATION

International cooperation in the Americas will continue, for some time, to require aid and assistance from richer to poorer countries and from outside the Americas. What is proposed here are ways to organize and direct that aid to contribute to greater collaboration among the countries of the Americas.

New forms of aid should:

increase the variety of policy options from which governments (and national and regional communities) can choose;

de-link funding by bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies from the process of identification of policy options;

increase the diversity of stakeholders that participate in the process of policy formulation and decision-making.

The proposals seek to reduce external control over national policies, to maximize the quality and effectiveness of national education policies, and to stimulate regional collaboration.

1. Increase the Variety of Policy Options --Three Tasks for International Agencies

a. Encourage their staffs to develop alternative perspectives on education and how it should be delivered. This could be accomplished by creation of an autonomous group responsible for policy research. This de-linking would provide technical assistance personnel with access to research not constrained by the paradigm dominant in the agency.

b. Expand funding of research to assess the cost and effectiveness of new approaches to education. The range of experimentation taking place in the Americas is very large; almost every country has some major reform under way, and some countries are constantly trying out new programs in education. Most of these experiments are never evaluated; the knowledge acquired through their success or failure is lost and failures are sometimes repeated in other times and places.

c. Make development of autonomous national capacity for decision-making a primary objective of all education projects. National participation in decision-making will be greatest when requisite knowledge is produced nationally.

2. De-Link Assistance Funding from Policy Choice

The logic behind conditionality is a reasonable desire by international assistance agencies to insure that funds are well spent. The agencies require some way to assure that governments will follow through on their agreements. Unfortunately the linking of funding to intervention by international agencies maintains dependency and weakens public institutions. Without competent governments democratic institutions do not flourish, and the cycle of decay continues.

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International assistance should:

1) contribute to increasing the legitimacy of public institutions2) build a relationship of trust between agencies and recipients 3) make funds available to local as well as national organizations, and4) reduce the control that agencies feel obliged to exercise over project preparation and

implementation.

Two Approaches to De-Linking

(1). Development contracts can move aid in the direction of being a collaborative form of cooperation. In this approach both parties (donor and recipient) commit themselves to actions and obligations. Experience with this form of aid is limited, but the model characterizes some of the more recent linkages with European countries and agencies. Project Columbus, for example, commits both American and European countries to change, although resources flow from Europe to Latin America.

(2). A second approach is the independent or autonomous development fund. These funds are administered by legally and politically independent bodies. They are organized and monitored to insure financial accountability, and receive competing proposals for funding from both government and non-governmental organizations in a region or country. The development funds are financed through transfers of public revenues, bond issues, debt swaps and conventional aid. Funds are managed by an autonomous board of trustees prohibited by charter from political activity. They are monitored to insure use of professional criteria in decisions to finance projects, but initiatives are generated by national, central and local organizations. International organizations can withdraw their support if the fund does not live up to its charter.

The proposal here is to found a regional development fund for education in the Americas. The mission of this fund would be the stimulation of collaborative projects involving two or more countries seeking to develop new forms of education.

2. Increase the Diversity of Stakeholders that Participate in Decision-Making. We know relatively little about how to build national consensus with respect to

education. Networking strategies have been used to increase private sector dialogue with national governments and to help developing country universities conduct research that is more policy relevant. Some work has also been done on how the research process can be altered to increase stakeholder participation and generate consensus.xviii Missing is systematic understanding of how to develop a regional consensus about education.

Regional collaboration permits economies of scale not achieved when countries undertake their own projects. Globalization is both cause and source of solution for some of the problems implied in the lines of action. Collaborative action at the regional level can contribute both to solving these problems and to enhancing national idiosyncrasies.

AN EXAMPLE OF A PROPOSED REGIONAL COLLABORATION

This proposal is designed to maintain national differences while also taking advantage of regional-level knowledge.

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1. Bilateral or multilateral agencies (or a regional development fund) select among competitors the best proposal for regional development and testing of instructional units (such as those developed for the Colombian Escuela Nueva).

2. Teachers in several countries share their best instructional units, which are tested in other settings.

3. Assessment of the units includes attention to contextual conditions.4. Best units are prepared in modular form with information about contextual

requirements. 5. Evaluation experts prepare assessment instruments for each unit.6. Units and assessment instruments are published centrally (i.e., in large volume to

reduce cost) and publicized across the region.7. Systems purchase, from their regular budgets, those units appropriate to their

curriculum objectives.

Similar efforts can be carried out in the development of: programs to benefit vulnerable populations, methods for system assessment and institutional accreditation, teaching training programs, capacity for school and system management, education and training programs for both national and multinational employment, intercultural bilingual education, especially for peoples that live in more than one country, region-wide systems of information and communication.

All these are feasible with current technologies; all can be achieved for the benefit of all participants without the harmful effects that can accompany uniformization. All of these efforts can be consistent with the new paradigm of development that promises so much for the future of our hemisphere.

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A PROPOSAL FOR HORIZONTAL COOPERATION AMONG COUNTRIES

All the countries in the hemisphere have had experiences with education programs that can be regarded as successful at increasing coverage, bringing about greater equity, or raising the quality of education at different levels and in various modalities. However, no systematic strategy exists that might enable education ministries to share those experiences and ministers to expound their strengths, the lessons learned, and the challenges that they continue face.

One proposal is for the OAS, as Technical Secretariat, to develop a mechanism that might permit such horizontal cooperation among countries, in which the stakeholders (supervisors, school principals, teachers, and education authorities) would themselves do the sharing, and international agencies would only facilitate the process. This strategy will make it possible to bring an improvement in education programs and to progress with firmer stride toward the objectives of the Summit of the Americas. If each education ministry could identify and share with other ministries the programs that they have been implementing for some time, that extend beyond a single government term, and that have borne fruit, not only because they meet their intended objectives, but because there is quantitative and qualitative evidence that attests to their impact, then that horizontal cooperation, assisted by the international community, becomes a way of learning for all the stakeholders.

|It should be emphasized that the systematization and evaluation of selected programs must

be a fundamental part of this mechanism. Accordingly, it will be very important to involve local, municipal or provincial stakeholders, as well as national and international researchers, in order to examine the program from every angle with the aim of improving and sharing it with other countries, not with a view to imposing it on them but, rather, to making careful adjustments in order to adapt it to different contexts, needs, and realities. The materials produced by the process will be made available to countries interested in putting in motion programs inspired by lessons learned in cases similar to their own.

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181-222.i

ii

iii These criticisms are made in every country, from Canada to Chile (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; Schiefelbein & others, 1998). iv See Reimers (2000) for detailed accounts of inequality in education.v (Lockheed & Verspoor, 1991).vi To some extent all cooperation involves a reduction in sovereignty. Whether as aid or as collaboration, one or both cooperating countries give up some control over internal decision processes. A discussion of sovereignty issues in aid and cooperation see Sellers (1996).vii For examples see King (1991), Farrell(1994), and Buchert (1995).viii See, for example, Krueger (1993), Cassen (1994) and Stokke (1996). ix The following list of negative practices attributed to one agency operating in Africa has relevance for agency practices in the Americas as well. The agencies control education programs by:

1) providing loans only for agency-specified programs;2) establishing conditions (changes in policies and practices) that must be met before loans can

be implemented;3) influencing the hiring of foreign consultants to help in implementation;4) providing overseas training and education in institutions approved by the agency;5) organizing communication among policy-makers in various countries;

6) using research to justify recommendations for specific programs (Samoff, 1993).x For a critical review of the experience of NGOs see Smith (1990).xi Arnove (1982), Berman (1983) and Stifel (1982).xii Paul Streeten in Stifel, et al. (1982).xiii For a review of experiences with education research networks in developing countries see McGinn (1996)xiv The electronic address of REDUC is www.reduc.cl. xv (Consejo Interamericano para el Desarrollo Integral, 1998)xvi This change was signaled 10 years ago by ECLAC. See Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (1992).xvii These arguments are made by Schiefelbein and Tedesco (1995).xviii For Latin American examples see Nieto Angel (1996), Reimers and McGinn (2000) and Rossi (1999).

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http://www.reduc.cl/

Schiefelbein, E., & others, a. (1998). Education in the Americas: Quality and Equity in the Globalization Process. Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States.

Schiefelbein, E., & Tedesco, J. C. (1995). Una Nueva Oportunidad: el rol de la educacion en el desarrollo de America Latina. Buenos Aires: Santillana.

Sellers, M. N. S. (1996). The New world order: sovereignty, human rights, and the self -determination of peoples. Oxford: Berg.

Smith, B. H. (1990). More than Altruism: The politics of private foreign aid. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Stifel, L. D., Davidson, R. K., & Coleman, J. S. (Eds.). (1982). Social Sciences and Public Policy in the Developing World. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Stokke, O. (Ed.). (1996). Foreign Aid Towards the Year 2000: Experiences and challenges. London: Frank Cass.

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