Johannesburg schools to play key part in world’s biggest grassroots online education conference
Two Johannesburg schools are to play vital roles in what is billed as the ‘world’s biggest education conference’.
The schools have been chosen for its expertise and commitment to key areas of education: the African Leadership Academy in Honeydew was chosen for its programmes to enhance employability, entrepreneurship and life skills while Roedean School was picked for its commitment to deepening family and community engagement.
Each school is to be part of a showcase of 100 schools which will gather online to share expertise and best practices in the inaugural World Education Week, from 5-9th October, in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on Quality Education (SDG 4)
A hundred schools have been hand-picked for their expertise across a range of educational themes, such as enhancing employability and life-skills; deepening family and community engagement; the use of technology; a focus on wellbeing; and promoting the science of learning and teaching. Each will share their wisdom to an online audience expected to reach 100,000 worldwide. The ambition driving World Education Week is to accelerate progress to achieve UN SDG 4, a commitment designed to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all.
The principal of Roedean school, Fiona Rogers, said:
“The global coronavirus pandemic has highlighted both worldwide inequalities and the interdependence of communities. There is an urgent need to develop strong leadership within communities to implement social programmes and to bring greater equity to education; solving these problems will require new ways of thinking, as well the development of socially conscious dispositions such as deep empathy for others. The World Education Week initiative will bring opportunities to showcase work being done in these fields and we are, therefore, both delighted and honoured to have been chosen to participate in this inaugural event. We hope that our experience within the sub-theme of “Deepening Family and Community Engagement” will inspire others to take action and that we, in turn, will learn from others so that we can enrich our contribution further..”
Hatim Eltayeb of the African Leadership Academy concurred:
“Our pupils and teachers are thrilled to be selected to host a showcase event during World Education Week, which will allow schools all over the world to learn and innovate together, improving education from the grass-roots up. With our focus on arts education, we are proud to be a founding showcase school of such an ambitious project, and are looking forward to our event.”
The ground-breaking event is led by Vikas Pota, a globally-respected leader and driving force in the education, international development, philanthropy and technology sectors. In launching the event, Mr Pota said:
“I congratulate both schools for being selected to take part in our Global Showcase for World Education Week. By sharing the ways in which this school has developed its particular expertise, we hope others will feel inspired to undertake the same journey to excellence.”
“I am incredibly inspired by the schools that applied to take part in this year’s World Education Week. Their commitment to improving the life chances of their learners by nurturing expertise and wanting to share their experience with others, especially in these challenging times, says a lot about the education community. They are our heroes and World Education Week provides us all an opportunity not just to learn from them, but to celebrate their successes, too.”
The conference has won the backing of Andreas Schleicher, the Director for Education at the OECD, who said:
“What’s exciting about World Education Week is the idea of schools around the world sharing their expertise with their peers. After a turbulent period in global education, this is a great way of building back better.”
World Education Week is an effort by thirty civil society organisations coming together after the record-breaking T4 conference on 30th May that was attended by over 100,000 teachers.
The event will be hosted from the World Education Week website, with registration opening from September 1st.