RSS FeedCivil Society and Commonwealth Education: by Peter Williams
Posted by AlexT - 29/11/09 at 11:11 amA longer version of this article appears in the December 2009 edition of the Round Table, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.
The Commonwealth is rooted in past movement of peoples and in present-day links between individuals and institutions. Indeed, the health of the intergovernmental Commonwealth depends on the concurrent existence of a vibrant ‘Commonwealth of peoples’.
At the strategic level of thinking about the Commonwealth’s long-term future, the need to support people-to-people and institution-linking networks and to invest in education about the Commonwealth may seem only too obvious. More could and should be done to nurture the civil society constituency of associations committed to strengthening Commonwealth interchange and Commonwealth values. This is not just because civil society networks represent the essence of the Commonwealth relationship, but also because they can play a major supportive role in fostering understanding and appreciation for the association itself.
Sadly, however, member governments and the Secretariat have largely neglected the challenge of raising awareness of, and interest in, the Commonwealth among those in civil society who might provide core support for the Commonwealth and its programmes. In the short-term actuality of Commonwealth Secretariat budget decisions these agendas get very short shrift.
This neglect is part of a wider problem of the low priority that human development is accorded in Commonwealth agendas. Education in particular is largely taken for granted and its prominence in Commonwealth co-operative activity – through the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP), Commonwealth of Learning and civil society programmes of educational exchange – is poorly reflected in Secretariat structures.
The UK actually spends more each year on bilaterally-administered Commonwealth Scholarships than it does on the Secretariat, Commonwealth Foundation and Commonwealth of Learning combined, The British Government’s stance on Commonwealth education cooperation in its multilateral forms is, however, largely one of indifference. Not since 1980 has the UK sent a Secretary of State to the triennial conferences of Commonwealth education ministers.
Few people, it seems, are conscious of the potential asset for Commonwealth co-operation of the 25,000-strong Commonwealth scholarships alumni. Or that of the 70 or so associations accredited to the Commonwealth, about one in five are educational. A further 10 or 12 have education and training functions included in a wider remit of activities. Many of these work together through a sectoral group, the Commonwealth Consortium for Education, including the largest of all the organisations with accredited status, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, which has some 500 member universities and employs nearly 40 staff.
