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14:39 GMT 17:39 Moscow
Local Time: 17:39
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The problem |
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G8 response |
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Russia's position and role |
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Opinions |
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The Problem
Setting education as a strategic priority of G8 cooperation, Russia has raised a key issue on the global development agenda, an issue equally pressing for developed and developing nations and important for the entire world economic and political context.
The key challenge of achieving common international approaches to the development of human, social, and cultural capital should be addressed on the regional as well as global level.
The ongoing economic globalization and increasing intensity of international cooperation impose a common agenda on the various national education systems, whatever geographical and cultural context they exist in. This agenda should imply an agreed decision-making procedure on the most important principles underlying the international education cooperation strategy:
1) education should be adequate to the global innovation process underlying modern economic trends;
2) the quality of education should be relevant to the development of global labor markets and knowledge-based economies;
3) national efforts should be streamlined to provide access to quality primary education in the least developed countries;
4) education should play a role in cultural and professional integration of migrants into receiving communities.
The development and competitiveness of nations depend on their ability to produce knowledge and innovation. The increasingly globalized innovation infrastructure is built around tertiary professional training, which implies that national governments should set the stage for networking between research centers, universities, and innovation businesses, while developing public-private partnership to define key areas of science and technology and make them the engine of innovative development.
Labor markets will only become global with common understanding of qualifications as they are defined by different education systems at different career steps. This dimension requires ever-expanding international academic mobility networks for students, professors, and scholars; and unhindered sharing of best practices, ideas, and expertise on education and innovations.
An innovation-based economy will best work on new continuous education systems in which the concept of life-long learning and update could be realized. There is an urgent need for modernization of all levels of education, from primary school to highest professional courses, an effort that will not be complete without agreed international indicators for international assessment of education performance.
There is a need to agree on common approaches to the use of information technologies in education in order to immerse trainees in their future cultural or professional context more efficiently, partly through the establishment of open-access education resources.
Modern education systems need to promote trainees' proactive involvement in the training process, an area where the role of information technology could be crucial, and distance learning, a very productive option that cannot be realized without IT. Upgrade of mathematics, science, technology, and engineering educational standards will also help.
As continuous education systems gain importance, so does the status of the teaching profession, a key element of the modern socio-economic and cultural posture. The corps of teachers mastering relevant educational competencies is becoming a pillar of national and international development.
The Education For All (EFA) Program, a top priority for international development, is designed to reach the Millennium Goal of providing quality basic education for all, with an emphasis on gender equality. This effort has the following key goals:
- efficient and consistent investment by EFA donor-countries;
- stronger role of beneficiary countries and their responsibility for the implementation of national education programs.
In a global world, any country seeking sustainable development should be concerned about its linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity, which upgrades efficient migration policies aimed at cultural integration of migrants to a level of international as well as national priority. Migration policies acceptable to different national contexts - a sensitive issue for both developed and developing nations - will come through best practices and expertise sharing with the objective to adopt a new generation of language and legal as well as professional training programs that would help migrants integrate more successfully into receiving communities.
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