Welcome!
Over the last six years UNESCO and Microsoft have worked to build a strategic partnership that has yielded excellent results, including UNESCO's support for the last year's Imagine CUP World Finals, a worldwide competition reaching over 100,000 tertiary students, and the launch of the UNESCO ICT Competency Standards for Teachers in January 2008
We are proud to be able to partner with UNESCO again to jointly deliver the Education Leaders Forum 2009, to be held as part of UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education on Thursday, July 09, at Pasteur Institute, in Paris, France.
"Higher Education: Re-Visioning for Recovery. The Path for Sustainable Development"
About the Forum
During the Education Leaders Forum (ELF) 2008, the joint UNESCO and Microsoft conference on 'Success and Sustainability' just one year ago, discussions picked up on the need for stable financial systems as an important contributor to global sustainability. However, few ELF 2008 participants could have predicted the unprecedented disturbance that has taken place in those financial systems since then, or anticipated the sharp rises in unemployment and business collapse that are now hurting people in so many countries.
Current economic pressures force governments around the world to take quick action in creating strategies that will lead to a fast recovery and secure sustainable social, economic and environmental growth and development. Higher education is considered a crucial lever for all this. Not only to enable employment and foster innovation to fuel new economic growth, but also to re-skill today’s workforce and prepare the provision of lifelong learning and skill development which enable people and organisations to succeed.
Building on the momentum of last year’s event - visit the ELF08 blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/elf08 - the Education Leaders Forum 2009 will also be delivered as an interactive working conference.
On the theme of ‘Higher Education: Re-Visioning for Recovery. The Path to Sustainable Development‘ Ministers and Education Policy Leaders will have the opportunity to take the discussions from UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education beyond talk and work collaboratively on an action-plan for higher education transformation in their country.
Top-level speakers will urge rapid response to building new skills for much-changed or even brand new jobs in addition to longer-term reflection on how the global financial stresses force us to revision our aspirations for Higher Education.
The working forum will surface the challenges of today’s higher education and offer a platform for creating an action path to address these challenges and overcome the barriers of higher education transformation.
Please click here for the Forum Agenda, and for information about UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education please visit www.unesco.org/education/hed/2009-worldconference
We would be delighted if you are able to participate in the Education
Leaders Forum. Please click here for registration.