WAM Abu Dhabi, May 11th, 2012 (WAM)--Transforming Education Summit (TES) sessions concluded yesterday with a dinner sponsored by the Zayed Future Energy Prize and attended by a number of dignitaries and guests from abroad.

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Director General of the Zayed Future Energy Prize, CEO of Masdar said the wise UAE leadership has invested in human capital to build prosperous future, indicating that the Prize and Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) work together to build an advanced future.

The second day of the inaugural Transforming Education Summit (TES), hosted by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), saw stakeholder groups discussing their motives and methods for involvement in their nations' education systems. T he day began with keynote speeches by Tarja Halonen, President of Finland for 12 years until March 2012, and Muhyiddin Yassin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education of Malaysia, representing the high-level government view of education transformation.

During the summit, held at the Emirates Palace Hotel from May 7-9 under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Chairman of ADEC, both heads of states agreed that the primary goal of education is to maximise the development of human capital to sustain national economies.

As Tarja Halonen stated, "We are a small nation of around 5 million. For us it is especially important that we would use all of the resources of our human capital." She said it must be a priority to engage all young people and continuously update the knowledge of older workers and even retired people to institute a culture of life-long learning that can keep up with the pace of technological change.

"We must focus on adult education in many areas," she said. "We must remember that the skills of the younger generations will become obsolete very quickly. " The speed of technological change in the globalised economy was a theme that ran throughout the day. Muhyiddin Yassin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education of Malaysia, said: "We have to come to grips with the fact that the international economy is driven by innovation and knowledge. Developing nations must ensure that the education system can produce the workers that can act in this system." "Malaysia is no exception to this catching-up game," he continued. "Malaysia has made remarkable progress...on average 20 per cent of our annual budget is dedicated to education alone, and thus in the 5 decades since independence we have been able to increase student enrollment in primary school to 96 per cent. Malaysia has had more opportunities for employment in the competitive sectors of the economy. Income has increased. We believe this is due to our unremitting commitment to improving access to universal education." Yassin and Halonen both agreed that involvement of the entire community is essential in creating positive changes in education: "The success of transforming education is contingent on the involvement of main stakeholders," Yassin said. "Government must make every stakeholder feel they are part of the transforming process itself. We have more than 400,000 teachers and more than 16 million students across religious and socio-economic backgrounds, but we believe that everyone agrees on one important thing: the quality of our education must be raised to a higher level." But equity--access to education for all--is essential, or the benefits of education will be unevenly distributed. Yassin's compatriot Noor Rezan Binti Bapoo Hashim, Special Advisor on Education, said: "Malaysia's biggest concern is bridging the gap. It becomes most important in the rural areas, especially when parents are not educated. How do you convince parents to send their children to school?" Special efforts were made to encourage parents' participations in schools in impoverished rural areas of Sarawak, where the community's shared goal is to have a graduate in every family by 2020. Hashim said "Parents may not be able to contribute money, but they come with physical strength and classroom contribution. They walked 3 hours in the jungle just to welcome us ...the parents that came to the schools with their children and grandchildren then requested lessons in literacy and numeracy as a result of seeing what their children were learning." Engaging the community was judged as essential in many different national case studies, including Malaysia, France, and Canada. The Canadian example came from the province of Alberta, judged to be the highest performing English-language education system in the world. Their highly successful Alberta Interactive School Initiative was instituted after extensive community consultation, including an engagement of students through yearly conferences where student groups are invited to weigh in on the education system.

The Chair of the European Students' Union, Alan Pall, applauded student-led initiatives. He asked delegates whether students were underestimated in many education systems today, with the caveat that "students themselves can be one of the most conservative elements in the system because they have very high expectations about what education can give them. Are they given false expectations about learning environment and what they can expect from future careers?" Sergio Bitar, Former Minister of Education, Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, Chile, had more confidence in students' ability to advocate for themselves. Alluding to the Chilean student protests that made international news in 2011, he said: "University students are important political actors, not just in education but in tax reform and constitutional changes such as making education a public good." He stated that given this strong advocacy, it is highly probable that higher education could become free for all.

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