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Session #3: Policies and planning for 21st Century skills

This webinar is part of the Teaching and Learning 21st Century Skills online learning series.

The objective of this learning series is to support a 'breadth of skills' holistic approach to teaching and learning through the integration of 21st century skills in education systems in the sub-Saharan Africa region through:

  • increasing participants knowledge of key concepts related to teaching and assessing 21st century skills, 
  • fostering exchange between country participants in order to build collaborative capacity in the integration of 21st century skills in education systems, and
  • showcasing and learning from the Teaching and Learning: Educator’s Network for Transformation (TALENT) and Brookings Institution Optimizing Assessment for All initiative that countries can apply within their systems.

Session #3. Policies and planning for 21st Century Skills
Date: 19 November 2020. Time 10:00 am - 11:30 am UTC
This session is designed to highlight the varied pathways to ensure optimal conditions for the integration of 21st Century skills, and to demonstrate what these look like in practice. It will examine how 21st Century skills could be included in the educational planning cycle and mainstreamed in planning and policy reforms. It will synthesize information from the previous sessions through explanation of patterns of integration seen in countries worldwide, and articulated by countries in the sub-Saharan African region through their own strategic planning and implementation plans and experiences.

Intended learning objectives

At the end of the session, participants will be able to consider how their local conditions and particular priorities play into strategic implementation decisions.

Webinar Agenda

Foreword: Davide Ruscelli, coordinator of the Teaching and Learning: Educator’s Network for Transformation (TALENT).

Welcome and introduction: Hugues Moussy, Head of Research and Development, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)

The education planning cycle and 21st Century skills, Anton de Grauwe, Head of Technical Cooperation, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)

Mainstreaming lifeskills in planning and policy reforms, Cecilia Baldeh, Regional Education Adviser for West and Central Africa, UNICEF

Patterns of integration and viability: models of scaling with reference to adoption of 21st century skills, Esther Care

An example of an implementation plan from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nduku Kasang, Consultant for the Permanent Secretariat for Support and Coordination of the Education Sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Paths taken by countries in their 21st Century skills adoption processes: issues and educational philosophies, Esther Care

Q&A and concluding remarks, Hugues Moussy

About the speakers:

Davide Ruscelli is a Junior Professional Officer/Associate Expert in Education at UNESCO Dakar. He is currently ensuring the interim of the “teaching and learning” cluster of the UNESCO multi-sectoral Dakar Office and he coordinates the TALENT Secretariat, a task team of the Regional Coordination Group (RCG4) of SDG4. In this function, he is in charge of the implementation of the “Strengthening Learning Assessment Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa through TALENT” project funded by the Global Partnership for Education and he has managed on UNESCO’s side the “Optimizing Assessment for All – Africa initiative”, an action research project in collaboration with the Brookings Institution focused on the integration of 21st century skills in the teaching and learning process. Prior to joining UNESCO, Davide worked in UNICEF Malawi focusing mainly on education systems strengthening at national and decentralized levels.

Hugues Moussy is the head of the Research and Development team at IIEP. He started his career teaching History at the university level (in the United States and in France). He has held positions as a quality assurance programme officer in higher education and in high-level management in the executive authorities of French local governments. For five years he was chief of party for the French cooperation and special advisor to the Minister of Basic Education in Cameroon for international cooperation. Hugues headed the human development unit at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was in charge of defining and monitoring the French strategy of aid for development in the education sector, on gender issues, and on international migrations. In 2009 and 2010, he represented France in the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Board of Directors. He also served as a senior education specialist at the GPE Secretariat from 2011 to 2017, first as a ‘country lead’, and then as head of the quality assurance unit.

Anton de Grauwe leads the IIEP Technical Cooperation team and oversees the effectiveness of the technical support to Member States in provision of strategic support to ministries and aid agencies to build sustainable capacity for education sector strategic and operational planning. In recent years, he has managed various programmes to support educational planning and management, including in Nepal and Ethiopia, and he has coordinated a major analysis of capacity development strategies. Having joined IIEP in 1995, he has been involved in training and research related mainly to improving quality of basic education and to educational management reforms. He has also written and co-ordinated several publications on school supervision and on decentralization. Prior to joining IIEP, he worked for a few years in the Caribbean as a secondary school teacher and subsequently at the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar. 

Cecilia Baldeh is the UNICEF Regional Education Adviser for West and Central Africa. She has a Master of Arts degree in Education from the University of London (1990). She is an international Education and Development professional with more than thirty years’ experience in education policy and systems’ reforms for equity, equality and quality in education in eight African countries (The Gambia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Sudan, DRC, Tanzania and UNICEF-WCARO based in Senegal). Having taught for eight years in secondary schools in the Gambia and Nigeria, and upon completion of her Masters’ degree in Curriculum Studies, she served as a Senior and then Principal Education Officer in the Gambian Ministry of Education. She was responsible for curriculum development and implementation of the innovative Population/Family Life Education and National Girls’ Education Programmes before she joined UNICEF as a national officer in 1995.  In the countries she has worked in, Cecilia provided technical and managerial leadership of UNICEF’s education programmes, supporting African governments in the design and implementation of their education policies and plans. Cecilia has had a lifelong passion to transform the lives of children and young people, especially adolescent girls, through education in Africa.

Esther Care, a former senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, leads global projects which explore the integration of 21st century skills into nations’ education policy and practice, with a particular focus on assessment of these skills. A Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Professor Care publishes widely in peer reviewed international journals in psychometrics, educational psychology, assessment, and education reform. She is most recently engaging in Asia and Africa at national levels in assessment of curricular proficiencies and the development of 21st century skills assessment, and at global level in surveying student opportunities to acquire a 'breadth of skills' being provided by countries' education systems.

Juvence Kasang Nduku, a lecturer-researcher and training expert, is a consultant within the Permanent Secretariat for Support and Coordination of the Education Sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This structure coordinates the implementation of the DRC's Education and Training Sector Strategy 2016-2025. Mr Nduku holds a PhD thesis in Didactology of Languages and Cultures (Sorbonne Paris 3) and has worked as a researcher at the French national centre for scientific research (CNRS) in the field of linguistics and language didactics. He has also taught for many years in the DRC and in France. He is the DRC focal point for the OAA (Optimising Assessment for All) study, carried out with TALENT and the Brookings Institution and contributed to the final report of this study. 

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