Education – Where is it at?

Selamat Detang! Recently I had the chance to experience a life time opportunity to travel to Malaysia, where I was lucky to participate in the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM), aswell as a programme full of rich Malaysian culture and heritage! Over one hundered and ten delegates of the Youth Forum, from across the Commonwealth Countries, came together for a two week period discussing the one thing we all had in common… Education!

During the period of time we had a number of stimulating discussions and exchanges, from what constitutes human rights too respect and understanding one anothers cultures, which featured heavily within the forum. With sessions stressing the importance and inclusion of young people, promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedom, to ensure peace and social harmony throughout the commonwealth. I wanted to share with you, the actual Youth Communique that was produced by us as young people in Malaysia at the 17th CCEM, to hear your thoughts and opinions…

17th CCEM STATEMENT TO MINISTERS BY YOUTH FORUM 2009

PREAMBLE

We the young people of the Commonwealth of a range of cultures, religion, educational backgrounds, experience and regions believe that education should not be just academic rather should prepare young people to face challenges, both academically and socially. Furthermore, we reaffirm the statement from the 16CCEM youth delegates that education is a right for all and not a privilege.

We appreciate that for the first time in Commonwealth history the youth were able to dialogue with two of its Education Ministers as well as conducting a joint session with the Vice Chancellors forum. This combined with the Launch of the Scholarship Programme is a positive move towards development of education for present and future generations.

It is important to highlight that with strong emphasis being placed by the Commonwealth on issues of Respect and Understanding, the Youth have proceeded to engage programmes that not only theoretically capture the concept but to practically embrace the same through cross-cultural immersions and experiences. Reference can be made to the Home-Stay Programme recently concluded by delegates of this Youth Forum.

However, in light of the current economic situation, coupled with the failure to implement past recommendations from previous youth foray and the continuing developments all over the world, we believe there has been no greater time of importance to take on board and implement the following recommendations from the Youth forum of the 17CCEM held in Kuala Lumpur, June 2009.

For these reasons, we the youth of the 17th CCEM Youth Forum recommend the following:

STUDENT REPRESENTATION & STUDENT-CENTEREDNESS
We believe that young people in general and students in particular have an important role to play in the education and governmental processes.

RECOMMENDATION

We therefore, strongly advocate that students should be meaningfully engaged in policy formulation, decision-making, implementation and monitoring. Hence, we demand effective and democratic representation from the primary level upwards in decision-making bodies within the education system.

MODE OF DELIVERY
The traditional methods of teaching alone are not adequate in this age. Therefore, we advocate the mandatory inclusion of Information Communication Technology (ICT) at all levels of the education system.

RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend to ministers to establish a special commonwealth fund for ICT in education to promote and facilitate the use of ICT. We further recommend that the funds be used for the ongoing ICT training for teachers and school administrators. We encourage governments to allocate funds towards the development of ICT across all educational institutions.

SCHOOL TO LIFE TRANSITION
We believe that education should be holistic wherein the physical, emotional, mental, social and moral dimensions are all progressively developed and evaluated. This would encourage and emphasise the importance of personal skill as well as inspiring the potential of positive citizenship.

RECOMMENDATIONS
To ensure those activities are effective and well grounded we recommend and stress that they be recognised as co-curricular disciplines, which allows for personal development, critical thinking skills and explorer spirit. We also recommend that vocational and technical disciplines be incorporated into the mainstream system. Implementation should be at the earliest level of academic learning as well as being a mandatory requirement in the education process for academic progress. Finally, we are calling on Ministers to strongly consider the inclusion of work experience and community involvement as a mandatory part of the education process.

CONCLUSION
We the young people believe that much time has been spent developing recommendations and communiqués that have done little in respect to implementation. On this premise, we put it to you that you cannot achieve the global targets without youth involvement, we therefore call upon you to work with us and not against us!

Of which the Education Ministers responded: ‘As the world faces the greatest of challenges in every social sphere, the Youth of the 17th CCEM Kuala Lumpur spark a renewed hope, arriving as representatives of individual nations they leave a symbol of global unity, of universal family and leaders of today and tomorrow.

What are your thoughts on this communique and where do you see the future of education going?