A roadmap for action

This text gives a structured overview of some of the courses for action that the participants in the UNESCO IBE project worked out together as a group over several months. We went beyond identifying the barriers and difficulties together with the good practices being developed in the several countries and tried to define a broad outline for the type of school we wanted to build. We thus needed to sketch out a roadmap for action that would guide us in our work and overcome the feeling of helplessness that many of us shared. It is quite normal when writing about education to begin by saying “we must” or “we ought to”, without making it clear on whom those positive changes in education, or rather, in schools in different countries and contexts, depended in order for us to work towards accomplishing the goals of Education for All (EFA). Yet together we can, at different levels of power and responsibility, build a school for all that brings together quality and equity. This roadmap is a tool to guide our action, which in turn is itself enriched by our action, that of systematizing and analysing the progress made and the difficulties encountered.

Christine PanchaudEmail:

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Ana Benevente (Portugal)   Holder of a Ph.D. in sociology of education from the University of Geneva, she is a chief researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. From 1978 to 1993, she was a professor at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, and subsequently, from 1995 to 2004, a Member of the Parliament and Secretary of State for Education in Portugal. A member of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Education/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (CRIE/OECD), she is also a coordinator for the ad hoc ADEA/IBE group on “Policy dialogue in education” and a consultant for UNESCO and the Organisation for the Iberian American States (OEI). She is the author of numerous studies on school dropouts and school failure. Christine Panchaud (Switzerland)   Holder of a degree in political science from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. From 2003 to 2007, she was programme officer at the UNESCO IBE in Geneva, where she coordinated the transversal HIV/AIDS programme, as well as the programme on curriculum innovation and the poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. Before then, she was a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, New York, United States, and at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses particularly on the processes and dynamics of educational innovation and on the effects of social and political change on education, public health and social welfare policies.