UNESCO education report calls for new social contract between parents, children, educators

NEW DELHI: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a new education report Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education which calls for a new contract between parents, children and teachers around the world.

Through the report, the UNESCO proposes answers to -- What should be continued? What should be abandoned? And what needs to be creatively invented afresh?

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Over a million people participated in the global consultation process that helped in preparing the report, which calls for a major transformation to repair past injustices and improve the capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future.

According to the agency, the world is at a turning point and global disparities mean that education is not yet fulfilling its promise to help shape peaceful, just, and sustainable futures. “That’s why we must reimagine education”, the report argues.

UNESCO is asking for a new social contract that must unite the world “around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape sustainable and peaceful futures for all anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.”

For UNESCO, this new social contract must build on the broad principles that underpin human rights, such as inclusion and equity, cooperation, and solidarity.

It should also be governed by two foundational principles: assuring the right to quality education throughout life, and strengthening education as a public common good, the agency says.

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Proposing answers to these questions, the UNESCO report believes that teaching needs to “move from being considered an individual practice to becoming further professionalized as a collaborative endeavour.”

The report “is more an invitation to think and imagine than a blueprint”, and the questions should be answered in communities, countries, schools, educational programmes and systems all over the world, UNESCO concludes.