From - Tue Apr 01 18:41:20 1997 Return-Path:
Dear Mr Desautels, Thank you for your query which arrived in my mailbox on the UNESCO server. I received a similar question only last week - someone was looking for a UNESCO definition of what constitutes quality in education. Like the ISO quality standard, there is no definition or standard being used internationally up till now.
UNESCO's 'World education report, 1993', p. 77, mentions this lack of definition in any international convention - "the states parties are assumed to have effective mechanisms for defining their own standards". It then goes on to try to define learning and education standards by referring to the needs set out in the World Declaration on Education for All, adopted in 1990. They "comprise both essential 'learning tools' (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) and the basic 'learning content' (such as knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning." The text goes on "a 'learning' standard may be defined as a specific set of 'learning tools' and/or 'learning content' in the senses indicated above. In principle, it is understood that there exists a procedure for ascertaining whether a person has attained any given learning standard. An 'education' standard may be defined narrowly as a learning standard that an educational programme aims to help learners attain ... or more broadly and colloquially as encompassing both the 'learning' standard aimed at and the whole complex of characteristics of the education programme, e.g. class sizes, teachers' qualitifications, textbooks required, conditions of the physical plant, and so on, associated with that standard. In this broader sense the term 'education standard' is virtually synonymous with 'educational quality'."
UNESCO set up the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century under the chairmanship of Jacques Delors. For three years the Commission carried out worldwide consultations and analyses before presenting its report in 1996. Its pointers and recommendations to both Member States and to UNESCO itself speak of the four pillars of education :
"- learning to know, by combining a sufficiently broad general knowledge with the opportunity to work in depth on a small number of subjects. This also means learning to learn, so as to benefit from the opportunities education provides throughout life. - learning to do, in order to acquire not only an occupational skill but also, more broadly, the competence to deal with many situations and work in teams. ... - learning to live together, by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence - carrying out joint projects and learning to manage conflicts - in a spirit of respect for the values of pluralism, mutual understanding and peace. - learning to be, so as better to develop one's personality and be able to act with ever greater autonomy, judgement and personal responsibility . ..." [International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century. Learning: the treasure within. Paris, UNESCO Publishing, 1996, p. 97.]
I do hope these quotations will help to shed some light on the problem which resides in the difficulty of creating a single standard which could be applicable in so many countries of varying socio-economic conditions. A number of States have, over the past few years, addressed this problem at the national level during their educational reform processes.
Yours sincerely, Felicity Nacereddine
____________________ Felicity Nacereddine Documentalist Head, IBE Web site project UNESCO-IBE, Geneva Tel.: +41.22.798.14.55 Fax : +41.22.798.14.86 E-mail: ibeweb@pop.unicc.org or f.nacereddine@unesco.org