Honorable Ministers,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great pleasure that I address you at the conclusion of this important conference on the assessment of Education for All in the Asia Pacific Region. I congratulate Thailand for hosting this event so impressively and thank for their excellent collaboration and contributions, our global EFA partner convenor agencies: UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank, and UNFPA. My gratitude goes also to our regional partner agencies, ESCAP and the Asian Development Bank.

On being elected Director-General of UNESCO last November, I determined to attend some of the regional meetings leading up to the world conference in Senegal next April. I was convinced that these would be no ordinary conferences. For the first time, high-level meetings were to examine education policy issues in the light of country reports that give a more accurate picture of basic education than ever before.

Over one hundred and sixty country reports have reached UNESCO so far in a remarkable, worldwide effort to assess progress in Education for All since the 1990 World Conference on EFA held here in Thailand, in Jomtien, ten years ago. We see clearly the successes and the failures of the past decade, but above all - and this is most encouraging - we see that today, ten years after Jomtien, education is universally understood to be the key to all development. Individual development, social development, sustainable economic development. This awareness is the great achievement on which we must now base our future efforts. As UNESCO's incoming Director-General, I am here above all in a listening role. My task will be to ensure that your various situations, plans and needs are understood and responded to by UNESCO in the months and years ahead. This week's rich exchange of experience and the analysis of data from the EFA Assessment can have a tremendous impact on policy-making in your region, if there is a full political commitment to follow-up.

I am convinced that with this sound policy basis and with renewed vision and commitment, the way is now open for us to shape an educational landscape that meets the needs of the twenty-first century.

For those countries, which have succeeded, or have almost succeeded, in their efforts to achieve universal access to primary education for girls and boys, the focus now is on reaching the unreached and on improving the quality of education. I know that our host country, Thailand, is in this position after remarkable efforts over the past ten years. The region as a whole will benefit from a fall in the numbers of primary school-age children over the next decade.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may know, I have determined to make basic education an absolute priority during my term as the head of UNESCO and I would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with you on this vital question. Every country today faces the challenge of becoming a learning society and equipping its citizens with the knowledge and skills that a learning society requires. Basic education is, more than ever, the driving force for this process and must mobilise society as a whole.

When the United Nations system was set up in the middle of the twentieth century, UNESCO was created to occupy a unique position at the crossroads between human knowledge and human needs.

Today, in a world dominated by the emerging global knowledge economy, UNESCO's integrated vision of the social, ethical, economic, environmental and cultural roles of education, offers the broad approach that alone is adequate to meet the challenges of this "learning world".

It is an approach that prizes knowledge above all as the gateway to individual human dignity, to self-awareness and self-fulfillment. It is an approach that steps beyond a narrow vision of education as instruction or as a single set of job-related skills that cannot help the individual respond and adapt in a rapidly changing social and economic environment. I believe this holistic approach makes UNESCO particularly able to respond to educational needs in the complex world of the 21st century. A holistic approach to learning implies that we also take a holistic approach to the learners. Perhaps one of the failures in basic education strategies over the past decade has been to focus too exclusively on the traditional age group and traditional structures of the primary school.

While that remains the bedrock of basic education, it has few answers for those who do not fall within that framework. Alternative delivery systems must be developed to reach street children and out-of-school youth, semi-literate or illiterate young adults, the poorest girls and women, isolated rural populations, those with disabilities. Quality education for all is a moving target and if it is to be available to all throughout life, it must be found throughout society. We need to put a greater focus on the extraordinary potential of new information and communication technologies:
Not only for the opportunities they offer in terms of distance education, but also for the flexibility they offer for these different categories of learners. We can use these technologies to ensure that education does not remain a "once-only" opportunity. We can use them to forge the multiple links needed between formal and non-formal education structures.

Through all channels, from early childhood learning to adult literacy classes, from intensive skills learning to community education, a sustained effort is required to give each individual the basic education that he or she needs, when and where it is needed. In the information society, education plays, more than ever, a pivotal role in social development. It is both a catalyst for social development and an expression of the social achievements of a nation. An education system that caters for the most marginalised, that is pro-active on gender issues, that successfully balances the demand for both quantity and quality of provision, is the most reliable signal of a flourishing society. It cannot be a system that is only found within school premises and only available between the hours of eight and five. It must be led by governments, but it must also involve families, community groups, NGOs and other partners.


Ladies and Gentlemen,

These are some of the thoughts on basic education that I wanted to share with you. I will add just one more aspect at this point:
The renewed EFA effort must itself become more of a learning process. We must channel all of the knowledge we have gained about basic education over the last decade back into educational policies, planning and capacity building. All of us who hold responsibilities in the education sector must prove ourselves to be assiduous learners. The fact that all the EFA targets set in 1990 have not been met does not in any way affect the vision and principles of Jomtien. They were, and remain, entirely valid. However, it must affect the way in which we judge the levels of commitment required and the nature and scope of the action needed to achieve these goals. The EFA Assessment process is about learning from the past decade in order to achieve more in the next decade: Let us be realistic in our goals; let us measure and monitor our progress. And above all, let us never lose a sense of driving ambition where basic education is concerned. Every effort to improve literacy and numeracy, or to enhance analytical skills and problem-solving is a step towards the greatest ambition of all: To make the globalized world a world in which basic education offers equal citizenship to all.

Here in Bangkok, you have forcefully renewed the commitment made to basic education in Jomtien. You have done so in the light of ten years' experience in pursuing the EFA goals. You have done so in a much-changed world. Today, all over the world, many children and young people are still not getting full educational opportunities, but on the streets of big cities, they see the Internet cafes that have begun to spring up. They see the advertisements for mobile phones and fax machines, for CDs and CD-Roms. They know that there is an exciting, connected world in which knowledge is not just a phase of life but a way of life. There is little need to convince either children or their parents that education is the passport to this life. They can see the truth of that daily in the world around them. It is an opportunity to improve education that has to be seized by governments that no longer have to battle with ever-increasing numbers. I believe the demand for education will become irresistible over the coming decade and I believe that we can - and must - meet that demand. This will require greater commitment than ever from all partners, with governments taking the lead. I pledge that UNESCO will do all within its power to help the Asia Pacific Region implement its regional vision and plan of action for the future. I am confident that you have not only plotted a course for an Asia-Pacific response to the region's educational needs, but that you have provided ideas and insights of the greatest value for the World Conference in Dakar in April. Together, we will make the year 2000 the year in which education learns about itself and puts that new knowledge into action.

Thank you.