The CIES Annual Conference, in its 62nd edition, convenes thousands of researchers, students, practitioners, and policymakers interested in comparative and international education from across the globe.
This year, it will be held in Mexico City from March 25 to 29 under the theme, Re-Mapping Global Education: South-North Dialogue. At the conference, GPE Secretariat staff will present research that GPE has either conducted or commissioned and will host panel discussions.
Below is the list of GPE-related events at this year’s conference. Follow #CIES2018 on Twitter for highlights.
You can consult the full program here.
Sunday, March 25
What can we learn from applying an education system diagnostic?
Organized by GPE and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), this pre-conference workshop will look at diagnostic tools and how they can help researchers, policymakers, teachers, and other education stakeholders better understand an education system to identify the dynamics, complexities and bottlenecks therein.
Monday, March 26
Responding effectively to marginalization and exclusion in education sector plans
This panel, chaired by GPE Chief Technical Officer Karen Mundy, brings together a series of presentations highlighting marginalization and exclusion in education sector plans; presenting a new toolkit to build capacity to identify critical issues, select effective strategies and design robust indicators to address marginalization and exclusion; and experience of assessing the feasibility of developing education indicators by disability status based on administrative data.
Panel members, including GPE Senior Education Specialist on Gender Equality Jane Davies, will present the key findings from stocktakes of education sector plans and GPE funded grants across three areas: gender, disability and health.
Teachers for equitable and efficient education systems: a closer look at teacher allocation in developing countries
This panel examines critical aspects of developing and implementing evidence-based teacher deployment strategies in developing countries. It includes four presentations that address different aspects linked to a diagnosis, planning, financial support, and exchange of knowledge and good practice.
Ramya Vivekanandan, Senior Education Specialist, will present on how GPE supports countries to diagnose, plan, and implement strategies to improve the equitable allocation of teachers.
Tuesday, March 27
A feminist approach to international assistance: Putting the education of women and girls first
Canada adopted a Feminist International Assistance Policy in 2017, which includes working to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable have access to quality education, with an emphasis on advancing equal education opportunities for women and girls.
This panel will discuss how government and civil society organizations (CSOs) in the North and South can deliver on women and girls education from a policy and programming perspective.
Karen Mundy will be presenting GPE’s work on the Guidance for Developing Gender-Responsive Education Sector Plans, a key element of GPE’s Gender Equality Policy and Strategy.
Meeting the Challenge of More and Better Domestic Financing for Education
This panel, chaired by Karen Mundy, will highlight the ways in which GPE has contributed to improved global and country-level dialogue on domestic financing.
Shortcomings in the timely and consistent reporting of country-level financial data on education make it harder for countries to develop responsive sector plans, and limit the efficacy of the global development community in monitoring progress towards the achievement of SDG4 objectives. Clear tracking of education spending allows for the effective use of scarce resources; facilitating better understanding of how country and sector priorities are operationalized, as well as assisting in the identification of bottlenecks in implementation.
GPE, in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, has been working to develop a more consistent and timely approach to data collection around education spending. The panel will explore what this means for global conversations on education finance and how to advance the conversation on domestic financing focusing on the role of equity and efficiency in spending.
Pathways to getting all refugee children into quality education
This session will look at the state of refugee education around the world and what the opportunities and mechanisms are for achieving a step change in getting all refugees access to good quality education.
This panel includes a presentation by Anna-Maria Tammi, Education Specialist, who will present on GPE's approach to supporting refugee education through both funding and supporting the sector on refugee education planning.
Wednesday, March 28
The Equity Initiative: Expanding access to quality pre-primary education opportunities: Planning and financing for the pre-primary sub-sector
As pre-primary education is slowly becoming a more prominent feature of education sector analyses and education sector plans, implementation of quality services is impossible without financing for countries specific to this sub-sector. This panel delves into the key challenges and issues with supporting governments in the financing of quality pre-primary education.
Karen Mundy will chair the panel and provide additional insights and lessons learned from the GPE’s perspective on creating a policy dialogue on what is feasible in financing for the pre-primary sub-sector.
This panel is part of a three-panel series focusing on ensuring equitable access to pre-primary education.
Assessment for Learning: A GPE effort to strengthen systems of learning assessment
According to most recent data from UIS, 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not achieving minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics. Most of these children are in school.
In 2017, GPE launched the Assessment for Learning (A4L) Initiative as a major effort towards achieving improved and more equitable learning outcomes. A4L aims to build capacity for national learning assessment systems to measure and improve learning by providing technical and financial assistance to support sector planning and analysis, facilitating capacity building and knowledge exchange at the regional level, and promoting more holistic measurements of learning.
This panel, which includes a presentation by Ramya Vivekanandan, will cover different components of the first phase of A4L, with emphasis on the South-North, North-South and South-South dialogue enabled by the initiative.
Accountability in education: How to stop the blame game
Experts, including GPE Senior Education Specialist Raphaelle Martinez, will discuss the findings and recommendations of the 2017/8 Global Education Monitoring Report Accountability in education – meeting our commitments. The discussion will center around what an effective accountability system may look like and how accountability mechanisms can be detrimental if badly designed. The panel will provide insights into how a wide range of actors are held accountable for their education responsibilities.
Emergency education program in South Sudan and what this means for a southern context with the largest population of out-of-school children
South Sudan has the highest proportion of out-of-school children among conflict zones globally, and for the past four years education has continued under an Emergency Education Program covering 2014-2017.
This panel, which will include a presentation by GPE’s Anna-Maria Tammi, will take a deep dive into the context of South Sudan and look at: providing education in emergency situations: the case of South Sudan; assessing learning outcomes in a crisis and conflict affected environment; addressing the psychosocial needs to learners; and rapid education risk analysis in South Sudan.