IIEP and partners renew commitments for a changing world

Meeting at the Institute’s Headquarters in Paris, IIEP and its partners reviewed successes, analysed lessons learned, and explored future orientations
On 9 March 2012, IIEP met with its main financial partners and other bilateral agencies in Paris to stock take on the different institutional changes and adaptations, which the institute introduced over the past two years, as well as and to discuss recent successes in delivery at country level, as well as future collaboration with development partners in educational planning and management.
The meeting was the occasion to highlight IIEP’s varied contributions to policy-formulation and planning processes in various contexts and domains around the world. IIEP staff presented examples of results from its work on:
- the implementation of fee-abolition in the Republic of Congo;
- mainstreaming conflict and disaster risk reduction strategies in planning procedures and processes of the ministries of Burkina Faso and Chad,
- developing nationally-owned planning processes and plans in Afghanistan and South Sudan,
- setting up new school mapping tools and supporting their implementation in Madagascar.
Other aspects of IIEP’s work were also discussed, particularly those related to the Institute’s capacity to guide decision-making and policy formulation in such areas as ethics and corruption, decentralization of education, and management reforms in higher education in Asia.
In their brief interventions, Raymond E. Wanner, Chairman of IIEP Governing Board, and Qian Tang, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, stressed the value of IIEP as a strong technical and results-oriented institute, further commenting that support and financial contributions to the Institute were a good investment to help countries improve education service delivery.
As the Institute has recently begun deliberations on its new Medium-Term Strategy (which begins in 2014), the meeting also provided an opportunity to consult with IIEP’s partners on preliminary ideas for broad, future orientations in the context of the post-2015 discussions. The fruitful and lively discussion focused on the quality of learning and the overall good functioning of education systems and their relationship to employability and social transformation, transparent governance, and integration of risk analysis in plan preparation, as well as persistent gender inequalities in education.
At a time of policy shifts in development cooperation, IIEP did not miss the opportunity to make the case for a continued focus on education, with investments commensurate with the aspirations of youth and the challenges of a world in deep transformation.
Eleven countries* were represented at the meeting, including representatives of bilateral agencies, UNESCO Headquarters, and Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs. Discussions on IIEP’s services and future programmes will be ongoing with the Institute’s beneficiaries and core funders, including those partners who could not attend the meeting such as Australia, and Finland.
* Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
Links: IIEP in action (2010-2011).