SESAME - January 2001
VC’s Column
Education for All
This summer I shall leave the OU to take up new appointment as the Assistant Director-General with responsibility for Education at UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation based in Paris. It will be a wrench to leave the OU but the job at UNESCO is tremendously exciting and the timing seems right. My two predecessors as vice-chancellor, Lord Perry and Sir John Horlock, each served the University for a decade. I am now in my eleventh year in office and this seems like a good time to let a fourth Vice-Chancellor take the reins. An appointment committee made up of members of the Council and the Senate will recommend a successor to the Council later this year.
It has been an immense privilege to lead the OU through a decade when fortune has smiled on us. The University has grown substantially in scale, in scope and in reputation and can, I believe, face the future with confidence. During my time as Vice-Chancellor some 150,000 students have obtained their degrees and I have met nearly a third of them at degree ceremonies. In many thousands of conversations as we shook hands I have learned that most graduates also seem to face the future with a confidence that they attribute in part to their OU studies. I look forward to meeting some of this year’s new graduates at the degree ceremonies that I will attend before I leave.
I cannot imagine a better training for my task at UNESCO than leading the Open University. The OU’s core mission of being open to people, to places, to methods and to ideas has now become the world’s agenda for education. With the Cold War well and truly over the community of nations is working together more effectively to promote the collective good of humankind. This has led the United Nations system and the World Bank institutions to agree on a set of development targets aimed at reducing by half, by 2015, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty (less than $1 per day).
One of key targets is the Education for All programme. Experience shows that putting all children, especially girls, through primary school is the best investment that any country can make in its economic and social future. At the moment 100 million children never attend school and another 150 million leave before they have learned to read, write and use number so the challenge is huge. Addressing it will be the core of my new job at UNESCO.
UNESCO’s particular role, as an international organisation for intellectual co-operation, is to generate and sift the ideas and policies that will enable donor countries and organisations to spend their funds effectively in meeting the development targets. It is in this context that I know I will find my OU experience invaluable. Achieving Education for All will require massive innovation in methods and the OU has institutionalised the spirit of innovation in a unique way.