Staff Writer

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has announced the hosting of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) to be held along with the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, according to executive director for education, Sanet Steenkamp.

She said TES will be a high-level meeting which will provide an opportunity to mobilize greater political ambition, and commitment to accelerate progress on education and Agenda 2030.

She also said that the contributions made during these sessions will form part of the baseline of discussion at the National Education Conference slated for August 2022 and part of the discussion paper for the pre-summit for education ministers in Paris, France from 28 to 30 June 2022.

“TES will be organised along five thematic action tracts which require a country-led inclusive and wide national consultative process to provide evidence-based recommendations for implementation of the following education aspects:

“Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools, learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development, teachers, teaching and the teaching profession, digital learning and transformation, and financing of education,” she said.

In light of this, Steenkamp said the education minister, Anna Nghipondoka and deputy minister, Faustina Caley, will lead consultative technical teams made up of officials from the ministry and education stakeholders.

These will be tasked with unpacking challenges affecting education and positive teacher and learning outcomes as well as obtaining public inputs through engagements, discussions and finally recommendations in all the regions from th 30th of May to the 11th of June 2022.

“The public is hereby invited to take part in these consultations,” she said.

In the meantime, Steenkamp said the ministry has conducted a national conference on education meant to assess progress made in the provision of education and to see whether the country was on track in achieving its vision 2030 goals.

She said the conference provided an opportunity to stakeholders to address the challenges in education, formulate recommendations and commit to enhance access to quality education for all children.

She added that the ministry has also implemented recommendations from the conference which has included the reform of the basic education sector to ensure access to inclusive, equitable and quality education.

Government has also signed the Agenda for Sustainable Development and has implemented the SDG goal 4 targets to “ensure inclusive equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

“To measure progress made on the implementations of the 2011 National Conference on Education and SDG4 goals, the MoEC is organising the 2022 conference on education to be held from 2-5 August 2022. Additionally, the education systems globally, Namibia included, have been facing challenges impacting on positive teaching and learning outcomes, and the Covid-19 pandemic which has further exacerbated these global challenges resulting in what is now termed “learning crisis”,” she said.