Is it time to rethink our strategy?

The global banking crisis hit us more than two years ago – in August 2008. Meeting just a month after the fall of Lehman Brothers, the EI Executive Board foresaw the risks for education funding and called for a campaign to focus on education as a key investment in sustainable recovery. EI Officers and staff worked on a campaign strategy that was endorsed by the Board in March 2009 and pursued by EI and many member organizations through the remainder of 2009 and into 2010.

This strategy combined global advocacy with national and local action. We worked with our coalitions of Global Unions and the Global Campaign for Education to get our key messages to the G8 and to the G20 as well as the UN, the OECD, the World Bank, ILO and UNESCO. Our messages on education as an investment not a cost, and on maintaining funding commitments for EFA, were carried forward nationally during the Global Action Weeks of 2009 and 2010.

By the time the EI Board met in December 2009, we knew that the big risk for education was the push by many governments towards so-called “exit strategies”, which would translate into budget cuts in many OECD countries, and reduced aid budgets for the developing countries.

In the wake of the Greek debt crisis and destabilization of the Euro zone, by the time the G20 met in Toronto in June 2010, the focus had shifted from stimulus to fiscal consolidation. This trend was confirmed at the latest G20 in Seoul last week, overshadowed by the US-China tension on trade imbalances and currency exchange rates.

And education is virtually nowhere on the agenda.

Today it is time to rethink.

The situation does vary significantly among countries – as three EI’s surveys of member organizations have shown. There are some bright spots. But in general, our campaign to put education in the spotlight in all countries and wherever leaders meet seems to have run out of steam.

There are both external and internal reasons for this.

Externally, the environment is far from favourable, as the pendulum of economic orthodoxy has swung back to cost-cutting of national budgets. The political environment in many countries has not been favourable either.

Internally, we have not maintained the vital link between global advocacy and national/local action that we talk about all the time. We have to ask ourselves why. Is it because national member organizations are overtaxed with the daily exigencies of responding to national situations? Talking with colleagues from other sectors, such as the banking industry, we are not alone. As one Global Union colleague put it: “Our national members are too busy putting out the fires at home to give much attention to our global calls for action”. Yet, we all recognize that the crisis was and remains a global one; that the way out must also be sought globally.

We will have to rethink how EI can help its member organizations join global advocacy to national action. Our campaign website “Hands-up for Education” needs revamping. It is hardly used anymore. Mea culpa: entries on this blog have not been as frequent either!

After the successful Quality Public Services: Action Now! Conference in Geneva last month, a new attempt will be made to mobilize locally, with joint campaigns to defend and promote public services in selected cities around the world.

But, if we are honest with ourselves and objective in our evaluation, the time has surely come to rethink our strategy for defence of education. Any suggestions?

A LITTLE BIT UTOPIAN

“When the untapped potential of a child meets the creative imagination of a teacher, a miracle occurs.”[1]

The vocation of teaching is, or ought to be, one of constant renewal. “New thinking, new approaches” is the title for the session in which I'll be speaking at the OECD Education Ministers' Forum tomorrow. Actually, this title sounds more like a slogan. When political decision-makers call for “new thinking, new approaches”, they often mean looking for ways of saving money. But the real challenge is to bring about fresh approaches where they count most - in the classroom. And the challenge for policy makers is to create the conditions enabling that to happen.

Over-emphasis on narrow “metrics” won't do it. There are things in education you can't measure. Policies like linking teachers' pay to student performance won't do it either. Such approaches are inherently reductionist. They overlook something essential about education: the miracle of opening young minds to knowledge, to their own capacities, to creativity, to motivation.

Jacques Delors proposed 10 years ago in a report for UNESCO on Education for the 21st century, four “pillars of learning”. Learning “to know”. Learning “to do” (skills). Learning “to be” (realizing one's potential). And learning “to live with others”. Good teachers build on these four pillars to foster a complete learning experience for their pupils. Their reward actually comes from seeing those miracles come about, day after day, year after year. It doesn't come from performance-related pay.

Sounds a little bit utopian? Maybe. Delors called education “the necessary utopia”. And that's really what motivates many, many teachers. That little bit of utopia is what keeps them going.

[1] Mary Hatwood Futrell, Founding President of Education International