Presentation to FOCAL
(Canadian Foundation for the Americas)
Symposium on the
Second Summit of the Americas: Education initiatives

Ms. Elaine Freeland, Ministry of Education, Quebec
CMEC Representative on the Group of 11 responsible
for the education follow-up to the Summit

As this conference has already demonstrated, the concern for international cooperation and development is alive and well in Canada. It was my own interest in this area that led me to accept CMEC’s invitation to take part in the education sector of the Summit of the Americas, beginning almost exactly a year ago. As Darren [Schemmer, Counsellor, Canadian Permanent Mission to the OAS] has said, there have been several meetings since November 1997, three involving Ministers of Education and four “technical” meetings of representatives of Ministries of Education and, in some cases, representatives of International Affairs Ministries of the 34 countries involved in the Summit. All of these culminated in the meeting of Ministers of Education in Brasilia in July.

I would like to divide this presentation into three sections and sketch out for you:

1. the process of development;
2. the outcomes;
3. the implementation and follow-up.

Given that the next Summit is to take place in Canada, it is important to make this information available to as many partners as possible.

The process

• As you know of course, the Summit of the Americas is an initiative of the Heads of State of the hemisphere — excluding Cuba — within the context of an eventual free-trade agreement in the Americas.

• At the Summit held in Miami, in 1994, Mexico was designated as the coordinator responsible for the education strand, with Argentina and Chile as co-coordinators. It was this group which drew up the initial text of the Plan of Action for education that was presented to the technical delegates a year ago in Mexico City.

• Then, in Santiago, in April, an agreement was reached to enlarge the coordinating team to ten countries — the Group of 10, of which Canada is a member [Note: the Group is now the Group of 11].

• So what we have now is the Summit Implementation Review Group — of which Canada is also a member — mandated to oversee the implementation of all Summit initiatives and, for the education strand, an intermediate planning group, made up of a core of 10 or 11 countries, but with an open invitation to any other countries to attend meetings with full membership status. This group — still coordinated by Mexico — will remain in place until the end of this year and then, in preparation for the 3rd Summit, the Coordinating Group will be re-formed and will include Brazil and Canada as hosts of last and next Summits, one Andean country, one Central American country, one MERCOSUR country and two Caribbean countries .

• The initial plan of action that Mexico, Argentina and Chile had developed eventually metamorphosed into a political declaration on national commitments to education as a priority dossier and the seven lines of action (which I will talk about in a few minutes), which were adopted by the Minister in Mérida in February 1998 and subsequently endorsed in Brasilia in July.

• These discussions must be considered only as the beginning of a process that — if the political will is maintained — should be viewed as a long term effort to improve the quality of education throughout the hemisphere.

• It would be a mistake, it seems to me, to consider that the only countries which will benefit from this process are those of Central and Latin America and the Caribbean. Canada has much to contribute but also has much to derive from this initiative. If our students are to develop a world view, be open to diversity, learn second and third languages and truly become educated and cultured citizens of the 21st century, then the opportunities offered by the Summit should not be ignored.

• The increased circulation of goods, of ideas, and of people in the world is the real context for the educational initiatives of the Summit.

The outcomes

• At the moment there are two major outcomes from the process that I have just described.
  1. A political declaration, counter-signed by all countries, which bears witness to the importance of education on government agendas.

     The declaration is somewhat of a framework for the other outcome — the seven lines of action — but has a symbolic value in and of itself, in that it recognizes the importance of education in the social, cultural, political and economic development of nations and acknowledges that it is through education that individual lives are emancipated and, in turn, it is those individual lives which shape societies. One would hope that this declaration will contribute to strengthening national education systems — the permanent on-going scaffolding of education — which is a fundamental requirement and which can only be addressed by individual countries on a long term basis.

  2. The second outcome is the Plan of Action, which for the education component is made up of seven lines of action, and these are the basis for the various projects for multi-lateral and regional collaboration.

• These seven strategies deal with:
  • Compensatory programmes for vulnerable populations;
  • Education quality assessment systems;
  • Educational management, institutional capacity and decentralization;
  • Education for the work place;
  • Professionalization of teachers (Canada);
  • Intercultural Bilingual Basic Education (Canada);
  • Information and communication technologies (Canada).

  The focus of all of these lines of action is primary and secondary education, with an overall objective of 100% enrolment at the primary level and of 75% enrolment at the secondary level by 2010.

• What surprised me in this Plan was the similarity of the strategies with the topics that you would find in any North American or European educational review of the past five to ten years. I think this is due to two major factors:
  1. The real meaning of these strategies — the sense of them — resides in the context in which they will be implemented. To talk about centralization or de-centralization, for example, depends on where you are starting from and what the organizational structure of education looks like in your jurisdiction. Who is going to relinquish responsibilities and who is there to take them on.

     To talk about the professionalization of teachers surely must mean different things when major diversity and disparity exist in terms of initial teacher-training or opportunities for professional development, in the availability of teaching resources as well as the social and economic situations in which teachers live and work. So even though we use a common language, the conditions in which implementation takes place are diverse and will influence the end results.

  2. The second factor seems to be the limitations of multi-national collaboration in a sector which is so central to national identity and history. Whereas all countries are struggling with their own realities, and educational issues and structures they are doing so independently of the Summit process, as they must, because, as I have just said the fundamental dimensions of an educational system depend on social, economic and political contexts proper to each national state. The Summit initiatives are project initiatives, limited in time and scope and dealing with topics in which consensus can be reached internationally. Which is not to denigrate them — but they must be put in perspective — they have the potential to act as catalysts, they aim at sharing the wealth of knowledge, they are certainly witness to the importance of the education agenda and in the best of all possible worlds they will contribute to the development of a sense of solidarity and citizenship, but they cannot replace educational systems which are in difficulty.

The follow-up plan

• Essentially, at the hemispheric level, there are two implementation mechanisms in place — a series of projects subsidized and sponsored through the OAS Inter-American Program of Education and a second set of regional projects which will be presented to the International Banks for either grant or loan financing. To my knowledge the first generation of OAS projects is now under way and the regional projects are still being drafted.

• Within Canada, the CMEC presented the Summit initiatives to the Ministers of Education in Halifax on September 29th and also requested the Ministers to support a request to the Federal government for specific funding to allow CMEC to fulfil Canada’s commitment to the education programme.

• With or without specific resources the provincial jurisdictions will inevitably become involved in educational initiatives leading up to the 3rd Summit. The contributions that Canadian provinces could make to the efforts seem obvious, and the advantages should not be dismissed. The cuts to education budgets in the last few years may mean that it will take some time before provinces embark on the various projects. It is possible for individual provinces to enter into this process just as it is possible for the provinces to act in a concerted fashion and, as has been said already many efforts will be undertaken by individuals and by institutions.

Furthermore, I can assure you that my colleagues on the Summit of the Americas Education Coordinating Group would enthusiastically welcome a commitment by Canadian jurisdictions as well as institutions and organizations to participate in implementing the action plan.

In conclusion, I would be remiss if I did not mention the tragic situation our Central American colleagues and their fellow citizens are experiencing. I hope that the efforts of our countrys’ communities, foundations, and governments will support a rapid restoration of social structures and, in particular, health and education services.

Speech delivered in Toronto
November 19, 1998

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