Education

Perspectives on Distance Education: Open Schooling in the 21st Century

Commonwealth of Learning - Editors: Dominique A.M.X. Abrioux and Frances Ferreira

The aspiration of making education available to all is not new. More than two centuries ago, Adam Smith argued for universal education on the grounds of public order and the preservation of freedom. A century later, Meiji Japan fostered education as the basis for a strong army and a rich country. By the mid-20th century, education was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has a right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

In the last years of the second millennium, the nations of the world resolved to give reality to this statement. In 1990, at Jomtien, Thailand, and again in 2000 at Dakar, Senegal, four agencies of the United Nations brought together over 150 governments and other organisations to develop plans for making Education for All a reality. In the 1990s, movement was slow, partly because population growth eclipsed the advances made in enrolling more children in school. However, progress has been much faster since the Dakar Forum.

There were 40 million more children in school in 2006 than in 1999. This success was achieved by focusing international effort after 2000 on the core goal of Universal Primary Education (UPE). The Dakar Forum had articulated six goals, covering aspirations ranging from the expansion of early childhood education to a drastic reduction in adult literacy. Two of the Dakar goals – UPE and gender equality – were incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals. Donors created a new mechanism, the Fast-Track Initiative (FTI), to help developing countries where conditions were judged to be propitious to achieve these two goals quickly.

The FTI has been relatively successful. Many more children are entering and completing primary school. This means that the number of children now ready and eager for secondary schooling is increasing very rapidly. UNESCO estimates that to achieve a global secondary net enrolment ratio of 80% would require secondary places to be found for 200 million more youngsters. Yet countries that have struggled to build the schools and train the teachers necessary to achieve universal primary education simply do not have the resources to repeat the process for secondary schooling using conventional methods.

This is one reason why this book on open schooling is so timely. Until now the movement to create and expand open schools has been overshadowed by the successful and massive expansion of open and distance learning (ODL) at the post-secondary level through open universities and dual-mode institutions. But now the expansion of secondary education is the world’s most pressing educational challenge. This carefully prepared and thoroughly researched book should inspire policy-makers and educational planners to explore how open schooling can expand secondary education cost-effectively in their jurisdictions.

A second reason for the new importance of open schooling is that the success of the campaign for universal primary education was bought at the cost of neglecting the other Dakar goals of Education for All, notably: 

• Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes. 
• Achieving a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

The studies in this book demonstrate that open schooling can also address these goals if it is appropriately designed. This is not to say that open schooling can be all things to all people at all times, because all institutions need to be clear what their main focus is.

However, through its inherent flexibility, open schooling can address a range of needs. Open schooling resonates well with the dynamics of the 21st century, when the concept of lifelong learning will underpin all education and training.

The idea of lifelong learning did not feature in the Dakar goals that were agreed on a decade ago. These goals tried to marry the conceptual frameworks of formal and informal education, developed in the industrialised world over many years, to the complex patterns of learning in developing
countries where education systems are still works in progress. It was an uneasy marriage.

Open schooling is one way of breaking out of this old paradigm. It can support the lifelong learning that enables people to prepare for – and respond to – the different roles, situations and environments that they will encounter during their lives. It can provide education, training and learning systems through which people can both learn and receive guidance and encouragement.

(See PDF for the complete article)