Guest of honour Closing Ceremony-6th Intl. Conf.2022

Ms. Beatrice Kaldun joined the conference virtually and shared her thoughts and UNESCO’s action plan. To quote her words, ” The conference is timely because our world is at a turning point where global disparities and pressing needs to reimagine how, why, and what will be the means of education which isn’t yet fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful and sustainable future.” She mentioned that this is a great opportunity for participants from 17 different countries to share their views and disseminate their ideas on way forward to reimagining education and enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

20% of children face exclusion from education on a daily basis. (Source: UNESCO Futures of Education – A new Social Contract) After COVID – 19 the situation has exacerbated in lower and middle-income countries. Ms. Beatrice Kaldun quoted the proposals from ‘Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education’ to the audience. She also stated equity and inclusion as an overarching principle, and a coerce to guide the collective work in re-imagining the governed education.

She briefly outlined the initiatives and activities of UNESCO. She also mentioned why UNESCO has been initiated to promote SDG4. 4.7, ESD, GCED, Empathy and related concepts at school, teacher-student, and community level. She discussed the importance of the above concepts for achieving the SDGs of a country.

In her concluding remarks, she shared 10 recommendations for the policymakers, bureaucrats, researchers, and practitioners from the Global Education Monitoring Report 2022 on inclusion. She finished her speech by thanking everyone for participating in such an event and their strong roles in collaboration. She assured that UNESCO would continue to collaborate with such initiatives that creates a platform for fellow researchers and practitioners working for equity and inclusion in education.