Three new international groups comprising experts from leading private businesses, academia, government and the third sector have been launched for the first time at the Global Education and Skills Forum 2016 (GESF) in Dubai.

They have begun work on drawing up recommendations on how to address education’s most pressing issues.

The three Varkey Foundation Alliances – the Alliance on Girls’ Education, the Alliance on Teachers and the Alliance on Innovation – held their inaugural meetings at the Forum. The three topics were chosen because of their significance in terms of improving education and global growth.

Each group will comprise 10-15 luminaries with an interest in their respective issue.  After their first meetings at the GESF, each alliance will hold a series of further meetings over the next year to produce actionable recommendations related to their focus area.  The recommendations will be contained in a White Paper to be published at GESF 2017 next March.  Each alliance will be funded by the Varkey Foundation.

The alliances include prominent individuals from organisations such as Unesco, Harvard University, Amazon and Lego Education, as well as various government ministers and their representatives.

They include Dr David Edwards, deputy general secretary, Education International; Brett Wigdortz, CEO, Teach First, UK; Esteban Bullrich, minister of Education, Argentina; and Christina Lowery, managing director, Girls Rising, USA.

Vikas Pota, chief executive of the Varkey Foundation, said: “The alliances have been created to find real and actionable pathways to solving public education’s longest standing problems. Issues like ensuring girls worldwide have equal access to education, raising the quality of teaching and respect for the teaching profession, and how to best use innovation in education represent three of the biggest educational challenges facing the world today.”

The Varkey Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation established to improve the standards of education for underprivileged children throughout the world. – TradeArabia News Service