Go back to news articles
24th March 2009
Dame Pat gave a key-note speech at the 4th World Teachers’ Day in Thailand and the 12th UNESCO-APEID International Conference.
‘If you believe that education is the most powerful means to change the world, then you will also agree that the people who pave the way to create such change are the teachers’.
The theme of this four day conference, ‘Quality Innovations for Teaching and Learning’, highlights the importance of teacher education and provides a forum for policy makers, educators, teachers, academicians and researchers to discuss, exchange information and learn from each other on how to teach and learn - in a more innovative way - with heads, hearts and hands to ensure a sustainable future.
APEID was established as an inter-country co-operation programme tasked with the following mission:
To contribute to sustainable human development (underpinned by tolerance, human rights and a culture of peace) through the design and implementation of education programmes and projects, mainly at the post primary level of education, which stress ‘educational innovation for development'.
Serving 47 UNESCO Member States in the Asia-Pacific region, APEID's goal is to improve the quality of education and strengthen capabilities and self-reliance at the national, sub-national and grassroots levels by:
- fostering educational innovation and research in support of development;
- forging partnerships in education, particularly through the establishment and servicing of networks to facilitate free and open flow of information;
- promoting inter-country technical co-operation; and
- providing technical support and advice to Member States and partners.
Over the years, APEID has maintained its primary focus, but the mechanisms, strategies and tools have been modified to meet changing times, contexts, priorities, needs and challenges.
Dame Pat’s paper entitled ‘Creating Tomorrow: Building Capacity for Sustainable Change’ looks at the experience of changes in the UK education sector over the past seven years.
Abstract
In November 2001, the then Secretary of State for Education in England launched the biggest revolution in the education service in England for well over a hundred years in a speech containing the words "with the help of everyone in the education service, and many beyond it, we must make continual and rapid progress, starting now". At the time I had little idea of the extent of the changes which were to follow. In the intervening seven years expectations on schools and their staff have altered beyond recognition. There is no end in sight on this journey as the government pursues its vision for a more equitable society and a world-class education system with children and young people at the centre. Crucial to this journey is leadership but not the hero leadership strongly favoured in the past. This paper examines how England is developing the capacity to engender such change on the scale being achieved and ensure the development is sustainable, the lessons that have been learned along the journey and, crucially, the leadership required across the whole of children's services.
Download her paper (pdf 172KB)
Go back to news articles |
