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«ГРУППА ВОСЬМИ» И ГЛОБАЛЬНОЕ УПРАВЛЕНИЕ В СФЕРЕ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
Дж. Киртон, директор исследовательского центра «Группы восьми» университета
Торонто,
Л. Сандерлэнд
В статье представлен анализ динамики развития проблематики образования в приоритетах «Группы восьми» с 1977 по 2005 год, анализ уровня реализации обязательств, принятых в данной сфере и факторов, влияющих на уровень исполнения. В материале подробно исследуются этапные для тематики образования саммиты, а также причины особого внимания лидеров «Группы восьми» к проблемам образования в последнем цикле саммитов, и роль международных организаций в осуществлении решений, принятых «Группой восьми». В заключении автор, формулирует рекомендации для председательства Российской Федерации, направленные на обеспечение эффективного выполнения решений по образованию, которые могут быть приняты в рамках Санкт-Петербургского саммита.
М.В. Ларионова
Revised version of a paper presented at an International Workshop on "On the Road to Saint Petersburg: The G8 Role in Global Development," co-sponsored by the Expert Council of the Steering Committee for G8 Presidency of the Russian Federation in 2006, the State University -Higher School of Economics, and the G8 Research Group, Moscow, April 3, 2006. Version of May 30, 2006.
Introduction
As an international institution founded in 1975 to promote globally the values of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance, the Group of Eight (G8) major market democracies since the start has had a potential interest in governing global education. As early as its 1977 Summit the then Group of Seven (G7) first proclaimed that "we shall promote the training of young people in order to build a skilled and flexible labour force so that they can be ready to take advantage of the upturn in economic activity as it develops." Yet it was not until 1984, after the G7 Summit turned its focus to microeconomics, technology and research and development as the foundations for economic growth and social advance, that education became a regular and rising G8 concern. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, education moved to centre stage, with Japan hosting the first G8 meeting of ministers of education in 2000 and with Russia choosing education as a priority theme for the St. Petersburg Summit in 2006.
Competing Schools of Thought
How well has the G8 governed global education and why has it performed in the way it has? The still limited analysis on this subject contains several competing schools of thought.
The first school sees the G8 as a civil society driven success. Nicholas Bayne argues that the modern G8 in 1998 and 1999, due to the Jubilee 2000 civil society campaign delivered debt relief so the poorest countries could spend more on education and health (Bayne 2000: 181-184). Jeffrey Hart similarly sees the G8's governance of cyberspace as successful in the domestic political management task of countering the claims of anti-globalization critics, deliberating on the growing digital divide, and developing global governance by creating the multi-stakeholder Dot Force in 2000. This success was driven by a critical civil society, the democratic principles of the G8, the shock of September 11th, the inability of established international organizations to include non-state stakeholders, and the G8's constricted "heads-only" participation (Hart 2005).
A second school sees successful G8 governance of cyberspace flowing from the novelty of the subject and the G8's institutionalization and specialization through top-down working groups. Gina Stephens argues that the dynamics of the Dot Force in particular induced its individual multi-
stakeholder members to alter their conceptions of interests and identities to increase G8 co-operation and compliance across the growing north-south divide (Stephens 2006).
A third school sees the G8 as a slow-moving success in governing the new knowledge economy, as a result of American leadership, Japanese support and their accommodation with a distinctive EU. Tom Lawton argues that the new internet-driven business models privileging openness and knowledge require the co-ordinated support of G8 governments if they were to prevail globally over strong, conflicting national and regional regimes (Lawton 2001). This slowly happened, as the "world's third dominant economic power, Japan, supports the same governance agenda as the U.S. and the EU and strongly advocates international policy consensus and regulatory harmonization for e-commerce" (Lawton 2001:56).
A fourth school emphasizes the G8's failure to deliver its sound educational commitments, because it did not recognize the underlying social and economic causes of poor educational performance in Africa and did not provide the necessary policy paradigm and funds. Ronald Labonte and Ted Schrecker argue that G8 members have been reluctant to provide the required levels of official development assistance (ODA) to meet the educational objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Labonte and Schrecker 2004: 79-95). They note that the G8 has endorsed the Dakar Framework for Education or "Education for All" (EFA) at its 2000, 2001 and 2002 summits, focused on the two goals of universal primary education (UPE) and gender equality, and inspired the U.S., Japan, Britain and Canada to increase aid for basic education, especially in Africa, after the Kananaskis Summit of 2002. However more than ten times more money is needed, says UNESCO, to meet the UPE and gender equality goals, and to stop the growing number of developing countries from falling further behind.
A fifth school sees a deeper failure in direction setting, due to the predominant power of a neohegemonic, neo-liberal United States. Michele Mastroeni argues that the G8 pioneered a regime for cyberspace governance, based on the principles of no taxation and open trade, which eroded the resources necessary for financing public education (Mastroeni 2001). While a social democratic Europe and its labour and political party supporters mounted a vibrant opposition to this thrust since the G7 meeting in Brussels in February 1995, the prevailing preferences were those of a U.S that by 1998 controlled 70% of the world's websites and generated 85% of the world's revenues from the emerging e-commerce field.
Amidst their many differences, these analyses share a common shortcoming. None adequately account for the great leap forward in the G8's governance of education at the Japanese hosted 2000 Summit, across a wide range of traditional and electronic subjects, with an egalitarian emphasis on closing the north-south digital divide, and by pioneering the differently designed Dot Force and a new set of principles for a changing world. This great leap forward, which set the path for the G8's twenty-first century global educational governance, took place when the U.S. was at the height of its dot.com fuelled relative capability and neo-liberal rise, and came before the terrorist shock of September 11th, 2001 reminded all of the pre-eminent security need for state-delivered public goods. Accounting for this particular path of G8 global education governance requires a far more systematic and detailed analysis than those provided thus far.
Thesis
This study conducts such an analysis. It argues that the G8 has been a striking, full strength success in twenty-first century global education governance, due to the rising vulnerability and declining relative capability of an America now forced to look to its increasingly capable G8 colleagues for help. As a global education governor, the G8 first took a regular interest in education-related subjects in the mid- 1980's, and has deliberated continuously, comprehensively and robustly on core education issues since 1999. At Okinawa 2000, it soared into sustained high performance across all
of its domestic political management, direction-setting, decision-making, delivery and development of global governance tasks.
This great leap into effective global education governance has been driven by several forces. The first is a once dominant America's declining level of educational achievement and ability to attract foreign post secondary students after September 11, despite America's leading public expenditure on education and teachers salaries and the long number of years its students are formally enrolled in school. An America ill-equipped nationally for the internet-dependent, knowledge economy of the twenty-first century found little multilateral help from a poorly performing United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) with a partial mandate and an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with a partial membership. In contrast, the highly capable countries gathered in a G8 devoted to the global promotion of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance found it easy to take up the tasks of educating an Asia where the free flow of information is still censored, an aging G8 citizenry whose lifelong learning and multicultural openness has become critical for future economic and social success, and a rapidly democratizing Africa across an emerging north-south digital divide. A new generation of G8 leaders dedicated to education as a domestic priority, led first by Britain's Tony Blair and then America's George Bush, brought the topic to a G8 Summit that they and their domestically popular colleagues virtually all attended for an unprecedented five years in a row from 2001. The new 1998 Summit format left them more time alone to deal freely and flexibly with the often domestic issues that personally preoccupied them and thus helped drive their summit to success in the education field.
The G8's Education Issue Area Defined and Analyzed
Within the G8, the field of education encompasses all levels of public and private instruction, from primary through university into lifelong learning. It includes technical, vocational and professional training and mobility, the employment and labour market, productivity, innovation and competitiveness in the new knowledge economy, and the governance of cyberspace. It further embraces social and political subjects, such as gender equality in education, education to prevent the spread of disease, education as a MDG, access to education in developing countries, literacy, and free information flows.
To explore how the G8 has governed this wide-ranging set of subjects, this study begins with a systematic overview of G8 performance in the area of education since 1975, both overall and in its major governance functions of domestic political management, deliberation, direction-setting, decision-making, delivery and the development of global governance. It next reviews the treatment given to education by successive summits, detailing the dynamics at those where the greatest innovation on education has taken place. It finally examines the key causes of G8 education governance, exploring in turn the components of the proven concert equality model of G8 governance: common vulnerability; equalizing capability; multilateral organizational failure; common democratic principles; domestic political capital; and controlled constricted participation.
An Overview of G8 Education Performance, 1977-2005
There are several ways to assess the G8's performance in the field of education on a summit-by-summit basis, both through overall assessments and through a detailed examination of the individual governance functions that the G8 Summit performs (Appendix A).
Overall Assessments of G8 Education Performance
The G8's overall performance in education has been measured in two major ways. The first employs Sir Nicholas Bayne's G8 Summit grading methodology pioneered in his classic work with Robert Putnam (Putnam and Bayne 1987). As Appendix B shows, using the Bayne methodology, G8
effectiveness in education-related governance (in the fields of debt relief, information technology and Africa) has generally been on the rise since education first appeared on the summit agenda in 1984 as a component of debt relief. The 1984 London II and 1988 Toronto Summits' central achievement, according to Bayne, was debt relief, for which the summits were both accorded scores of C- (Bayne 2005). The 1989 Paris and 1996 Lyon Summits, which also led on debt, had scores of B+ and B, respectively (Bayne 2005). Africa was the main achievement at the 1997 Denver Summit, which dipped down to a C-, before rising at Cologne in 1999 to a B+ for debt (Bayne 2005). Information technology earned a grade of B at the 2000 Okinawa Summit (Bayne 2005). At Genoa in 2001 and Kananaskis in 2002, achievements on Africa received a B and B+, respectively (Bayne 2005). Thus, there has generally been an increase in the grades received for education-related issues. However, core education was never the central focus of a Bayne study, but only an element of other subjects.
The second way of measuring education performance is through the summit performance assessments conducted by the University of Toronto's G8 Research Group's performance assessments since 1996 (see Appendix C). At the 1997 Denver Summit, the 1994 OECD Job Strategy scored a B and the global information society a C. At Birmingham in 1998 employability earned a grade of A-. At Cologne in 1999 education and human capital received B-. Okinawa in 2000 saw information technology get an A- and education an A. In 2001 at Genoa, the DOT Force received an A, and the Africa Action Plan's education component A-. However, Genoa also generated the lowest education grade on record, scoring a D+ on Universal Primary Education, in a failure that extends to the 164 countries who agreed upon this goal from the Dakar Framework for Action at the UNESCO World Education Forum in April 2000. At Sea Island in 2004, the Broader Middle East Initiative at Sea Island in 2003 received a respectable B+. Thus the trend in overall performance has generally been high and rising, especially since 2000.
Domestic Political Management
The first component of the G8 governance function is domestic political management—the degree to which the summit helps, influences, or dictates the way G8 leaders manage their policy, political and electoral priorities back home, by allowing leaders to demonstrate to their publics that the G8 is helping them do what their people want.
In practice, G8 leaders have occasionally referred to the G8's relevance in the formal national policy addresses they give annually at fixed dates to declare formally to their citizens what their overall domestic priorities are. Since 1999 there has been a major, sustained jump in such references, which have appeared in at least one of the G8 members' speeches every year. In the U.S. in most recent State of the Union address, on January 31, 2006, President Bush referred to education in seven paragraphs, energy in six, and health in four. His one reference to the G8, however, came in relation to energy, and in an indirect form.
Deliberation
The G8's deliberative or agenda - setting performance on education has generally been rising. As appendices D and E show, core education subjects (where education is the welfare target) and education related subjects (where education is a means or instrument to other welfare ends) received sporadic attention during the first summit cycle from 1975 to 1981, regular attention at every summit since 1983, and particularly vigorous attention from 2000 on. Core education, however, has sometimes fallen off the agenda completely. The education-related agenda is where deliberative success has most consistently come.
Attention to education rose to high levels in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2004. These peaks have come during summits which focus on Africa, such as the 1999 Cologne Charter on Lifelong Learning, the 2002 New Focus on Education for All and G8 Education Task Force. They also came
during the Okinawa Summit in 2000, which focused on the global information society and information communications technology, as well as the 2004 Sea Island Summit, in the context of broader Middle Eastern educational reform.
The G8 Summit has traditionally treated education as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. The first reference came at London in 1977 in the form of promoting training in order to develop a flexible labour force. This "education for job training" phase lasted until Venice in 1987, when "education for health" arose, in the form of education as a tool to stop the spread of AIDS in the Chairman's Statement on AIDS. In 1991 came "education for development," as the London Summit first stated that education is a priority development issue.
In 1999 came the great reversal to "development for education," as education became an end in its own right. The Cologne Debt Initiative instructed the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Paris Club to provide funding for the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) program so that developing countries could divert adequate resources toward the attainment of social goals, such as education (Bayne 2005, 52). The Cologne Summit also produced the Cologne Charter on Lifelong Learning, which set out specific targets for education, including international exchange programs, information communications technology and distance learning as a supplement to traditional education systems (Bayne 2005, 53).
At the Okinawa Summit in 2000 came "information technology for education." The Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society dealt with closing the digital divide, providing equal global access to information, and education in general. The Final Communiqué at Okinawa discussed the importance of the Dakar Framework for Education, which included the ambitious goal of Education for All. The leaders committed themselves to "strengthen efforts bilaterally and together with international organizations and private sector donors to achieve the goals of universal primary education by 2015 and gender equality in schooling by 2005" (Okinawa 2000 Final Communiqué).
The 2001 Summit generated the Genoa Plan for Africa, which promised G8 help to least developed countries (LDCs) on various development initiatives, including human development, education and information technology. The Italian presidency produced a summit document entitled Debt Relief and Beyond, which dealt extensively with the issue of education. The DOT Force released their first report just prior to the Genoa Summit. It concluded that action should be taken to build human capacity through a range of training and education initiatives. The report also stated that information technology and knowledge sharing can help to achieve broad development goals. The G8 Final Communiqué reiterated the Debt Relief and Beyond sentiment of supporting education. In particular, the leaders' communiqué reaffirmed their commitment to meet the goal of universal primary education by 2015, support gender equality in education, improve teacher training, build on the work of the Dot Force, and use information communications technology to strengthen educational strategies.
At Kananaskis in 2002, the G8 Education Task-Force established at Genoa released its report, A New Focus on Education for All. It was devoted exclusively to education and improving its delivery throughout the world. The goal of achieving UPE and promoting gender equality in education by increasing bilateral assistance to developing countries was reiterated by the leaders in the Kananaskis Summit Chair's Summary. Gender equality in education, or "education for girls" thus became a direct G8 goal. Following the Kananaskis Summit, leaders from the U.S., Japan, Britain and Canada were inspired to increase aid for basic education, especially in Africa.
The Sea Island Summit in 2004 added the Broader Middle East to Africa as a target of the G8's educational concern. The Broader Middle East G8 Plan of Support for Reform emphasized political aspects of reform, such as the Democracy Assistance Dialogue. But it included several social goals, such as education, increased literacy, and training for employment. Education, in its broader definition, was also a component of the G8 Action Plan on Expanding Global Capability for
Peace Support Operations, which aimed to train 75,000 troops for peacekeeping operations in Africa by 2010.
The 2005 Gleneagles Summit again focused on UPE in Africa, by including references to this issue in both the Chair's Summary and the document on Africa. Following up on progress made at the Sea Island Summit, Gleneagles further referred to education and educational reform in its document Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Broader Middle East and North African Region. Both Africa and the broader Middle East thus became continuing geographic parts of the G8's education concern.
Direction Setting
In its direction-setting function of defining dominant global principles and norms, the G8's education performance has been moderately high since the late 1980s. From its first mention in 1977 until 1983, education was discussed by the G8 only in terms of training for employment and labour flexibility. But since 1983 the G8 has normatively done much to connect the issue of education to many other core concerns. Education, since 1986, has been presented as an instrument for preventing the spread of AIDS, as a requirement for economic growth, for the management of agriculture or biotechnology systems, for development, for the environment, for preventing drug usage, for law enforcement, peacekeeping, or other specific skills, for the global information society, and for humanitarian purposes such as investing in people. It has also become the object of a growing array of other instruments, as in the Cologne Charter, the Education for All initiative, and debt relief or official development assistance for education.
As Appendix F shows, the annual G8 Summit first made education a priority at the Okinawa Summit in 2000 and did so consistently since 2002. It did so by including the subject in the preamble to the final communiqué, or as part of the separate Chair's Statement that has been a staple of the summit system since 2002. Information and communications technology appeared in the preamble to the 2000 Okinawa Summit. In 2002, the Kananaskis Chair's Summary addressed both the DOT Force's Genoa Plan of Action, and achieving UPE and equal access for girls. In 2003, the Evian Chair's Summary affirmed the leaders' commitment to raise productivity through education, lifelong learning and investing in knowledge and innovation. In 2004, the Sea Island Chair's Summary mentioned the G8 Plan of Support for Reform and made commitments to support initiatives for literacy and vocational training. In 2005, the Gleneagles Chair's Summary reaffirmed the leaders' commitment to Africa and universal primary education.
Decision making
The G8 has made many significant collective decisions, in the form of specific, future-oriented public commitments, in the field of education. These peaked with the 28 education commitments in 2004. Thus, as Appendix G shows, the summits' high twenty-first century deliberative attention to education has often carried through into the decisional domain. The 1999 Cologne Charter yielded no decisions, while Okinawa in 2000 produced some. Deliberative spikes in attention in 2002 and 2004 corresponded to similarly high levels of decisions. The twenty-first century decisional surge has not been sustained every year. The ratio of education commitments to total commitments reached at the summit peaked at Genoa in 2001. It generally declined since that time, with a particularly notable dip in 2003. Driving deliberation and direction-setting into decisions is possible, but by no means guaranteed.
Delivery
The delivery of those decisions has also been generally good in the twenty-first century but again has by no means been guaranteed each year. Since 1996, the limited available evidence from the G8 Research Group's annual compliance studies shows that compliance with the education
commitments produced at the annual summit have been complied with, or delivered by, G8 member countries at medium to high levels. As Appendix H shows, on a scale ranging from -100% to +100%, education commitments have averaged +59% overall.
Although compliance has never been in the negative range, there have been fluctuations. Okinawa 2000 and Evian 2003 both had perfect scores of +100%. Across the component education issues, the digital divide and the Dot Force did very well in both 2000 and 2001, yielding an average score of +88%. Lower performance came from the global information society at Lyon in 1996 (+57%), employment at Denver in 1997 (+38%), and teacher training at the Sea Island Summit 2004 (+50%).
The UPE or EFA initiative rose from +58% in 2001 to +100% in 2003. This same EFA initiative, however, in the 2005 Gleneagles interim compliance report, yielded only a +56%. This brought the total average compliance score for EFA from +74% down to +69%.
There are thus periods of high and low level compliance, fluctuating over time and not necessarily corresponding to the degree of attention that the leaders paid to the education topic. The Okinawa Summit had concerted education attention by the leaders and perfect education compliance. In contrast, the Kananaskis Summit also had focused attention on education but compliance of only +63%.
Development of Global Governance
During the twenty-first century the G8 has also done much to develop institutions of its own for global education governance. To be sure, in earlier years many of the G7's ministerial and official level bodies dealt with individual education topics. The year 1995 saw a major move with the creation of ministerial meetings and supporting bodies of the Global Information Society. Global Information Society ministerial meetings took place on February 25-26, 1995 in Brussels and May 13-15, 1996 in Midrand, South Africa. But only in 2000 did a more focused and frequent institutionalization for education come.
In early 2000, during the lead-up to the Okinawa Summit, the G8 Education Ministers met for the first time in G8 history, in Okinawa on April 1-2, 2000. This fulfilled a promise made by the 1999 Cologne Communiqué under the leadership of German Chancellor Schroeder (Bayne 2005, 80). The 2001 Genoa Communiqué committed to creating a G8 Task Force of senior officials to advise them on how to pursue the Dakar Framework for Education goals, and requested that the Task Force provide the leaders with recommendations before their next summit. Thus, the work of the Task Force on Primary Education fed directly into the preparations for the Kananaskis Summit. There were no further moves to hold a G8 Minister of Education meeting until the Russian hosts scheduled one for early June, 2006.
When compared with the G8's overall ministerial-level institutionalization, education has been a lagging field, despite its increasing importance at the leaders' level. Stand-alone, at least annual, G8 ministerial forums began for trade in 1982, foreign affairs in 1984, finance in 1986 (and 1973 as the G5 before), environment in 1992-4, employment/labour in 1992, terrorism in 1995, and justice/interior in 1997. Other less frequently meeting ministerial forums also emerged for crime and development.
At the official level, as Appendix I shows, education has been the focus of several G8 institutions. These began with the Working Group on Technology, Growth and Employment which started work in 1982 and ended in 1986. The Digital Opportunities Task Force, commonly known as the Dot Force, was established by the G8 in 2000 in order to recommend global action to bridge the international information and knowledge divide. The Dot Force released their report prior to the 2001 Genoa Summit. The G8 Task Force on Education was created at the 2001 Genoa Summit to advise the G8 leaders on how to best pursue the Dakar goals. The Task Force's report A New Focus on Education for All was released at the 2002 Kananaskis Summit.
The G8's Education Diplomacy: Critical Cases
A more detailed examination of individual summits where the G8's education governance has been importantly advanced again shows the great leap forward into full strength success in the twenty first century, and points to why that success was achieved.
London 1977
Education as a subject was first introduced during the 1977 London Summit. It was referred to in one of the final communique's 15 paragraphs. The statement read "We are particularly concerned about the problem of unemployment among young people. Therefore we shall promote the training of young people in order to build a skilled and flexible labor force so that they can be ready to take advantage of the upturn in economic activity as it develops."
The immediate cause of this concern was growing unemployment in Europe. It had risen from 4.7 million at the time of the Rambouillet 1975 Summit to 7 million as 1977 came to an end (Putnam and Bayne 1984: 82). The passage reflected a successful compromise between the Americans and British on the one hand, who wanted Keynsian macroeconomic stimulus to create jobs, and the Germans and the Japanese on the other, who resisted becoming macroeconomic locomotives with defined national growth targets to pull their lagging partners ahead. The Germans, supported by the French, prevailed by having the summit endorse the new principle that, in the words of France's proposed text: "Inflation does not reduce employment. On the contrary it is one of its major causes." With this direction-setting victory achieved, the summit was induced to turn to microeconomic causes and solutions for the unemployment dilemma and came to education there.
Tokyo 1986
The Tokyo Summit's Political Declaration in 1986 moved away from the notion of education for job training, to approach education in a more philosophical way. It stated that: "We have a solemn responsibility so to educate the next generation so as to endow them with the creativity befitting the twenty-first century and to convey to them the value of living in freedom and dignity."
This passage introduced into the summit the value of education not merely for instrumental economic purposes, but as a means to broader political and social goals. Its emphasis on "creativity" can be taken as a G8 "gaitsu" or pressure to reform Japan's tradition bound education system, in the direction of that of its G8 peers. But it also introduced the broader principle of "education for freedom." And its explicit focus on the twenty-first century very much set the stage for the educational great leap forward when Japan hosted fourteen years later at Okinawa, as the twenty-first century began.
Venice 1987
The 1987 Summit took a new approach to education, forging its first link with health. It suggested that in the absence of a medical cure, educating the public was the best way to combat and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. This emphasis on prevention reflected the American origins, with British support, behind the summit's treatment of AIDS, which itself flowed from an American interest in combating drug use.
Toronto 1988
For the Toronto 1988 Summit, the leaders moved to craft an agenda that for the first time dealt broadly with education as an end in its own right and included classic education issues such as literacy. They innovatively included in the summit a session for themselves alone where they could discuss in free wheeling, unscripted fashion any subject they wanted, including those erupting on the
spot. For the second time in summit history they came to a university campus, holding this session at the University of Toronto's Hart House.
As the summit approached the leaders and their sherpas began to consider in earnest what topics this session should include. The leading candidates were aging populations, the environment and drugs. The host prime minister, Brian Mulroney, however, wished to include literacy, a subject of personal domestic interest. It was related to aging populations, as older workers had lower literacy levels than the young. The major impetus for education as a topic in its own right came from British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. She drew on her knowledge as a former education minister in the British cabinet.
The intention had been to focus on demography, social security and education. The United Kingdom was very strong on demography and the European Community on education. The United States did not know what it wanted at the session. Despite earlier promises from U.S. officials, the Canadians as hosts had been unable to get Ronald Reagan to focus on the substance of the session. He was more interested in discussing the successes of his administration.
Monday, June 20, the second day of the summit, thus saw the innovation of an informal session or mini-retreat, where the leaders discussed long-term issues by themselves. At Hart House, the leaders held a relaxed discussion on education, technology and training. The session featured an open, friendly and largely spontaneous exchange on education. It was dominated by Reagan, Mitterrand, Thatcher and Mulroney. Reagan led off the session, saying that the world was moving to the post-Reagan era. Mitterrand and then Thatcher spoke. Both had structured interventions, unlike Reagan, De Mita, Takeshita, and Mulroney. These structured interventions took time and rather overwhelmed the discussion. Then Mulroney said a few words on illiteracy — a subject of great concern to him. The leaders spoke with no worry about a communiqué or a press conference that would reveal their thoughts to the world. The leaders discussion on this subject, an area of provincial jurisdiction which Quebec jealously guarded in Canada (and all other Hart House items save the environment), were not carried over into any of the deliberately and relatively short Toronto communiqués.
London 1991
Employment and training remained the central components of all education discussions at the leaders' level until the 1991 London Summit. In the London communiqué, the leaders added education as part of their discussion on development, stating that "Additional aid efforts are required, to enhance both the quantity and the quality of our support for priority development issues. These include alleviating poverty, improving health, education and training and enhancing the environmental quality of our aid."
Naples 1994
At Naples, education was broadened to encompass investing in people, and the importance of "developing a culture of lifetime learning." However, the centerpiece subject was the summit's endorsement of an American initiative on the new "information highway." This included a proposal to subsequently hold a separate ministerial meeting on the subject. President Clinton proposed such a conference under U.S. hosting but the EU's Jacques Delors succeeded in securing it for Brussels. The conference was duly held on February 25-26, 2005, as the G7 Information Society Ministerial Conference.
Halifax 1995
The 1995 Halifax Summit, while focused on the reform of UN multilateral system, paid no attention to education as a subject or UNESCO and UNICEF as the world's leading multilateral institutions in the field. It did, however, take up two education topics.
The first topic was the established topic of "education for employment" with the OECD and the now repeated G8 labour ministerial as its international institutions of choice. Here it noted: "At Naples we committed ourselves to a range of reforms in the areas of training and education, labour market regulation and adjustment, technological innovation and enhanced competition. As we pursue these reforms, we welcome the initiation by the OECD of a detailed review of each member economy's structural and employment policies. As a follow-up to our discussions, we agree to ask ministers to meet in France before our next summit to review the progress made in job creation and consider how best to increase employment in all of our countries."
The second topic was the new theme of "information technology for innovation" with the new G-7 Information Society as the institutional nest. here it declared: "We welcome the results of the G-7 Information Society conference held in Brussels in February, including the eight core policy principles agreed to by Ministers, and encourage implementation of the series of pilot projects designed to help promote innovation and the spread of new technologies. We also welcome the involvement of the private sector. We encourage a dialogue with developing countries and economies in transition in establishing the Global Information Society, and welcome the proposal that an information society conference be convened in South Africa in spring 1996."
Taken together, Halifax thus saw the G8 move from intra G8 to fully global governance, and reach out and down to embrace developing countries, transition economies and the private sector in its work. More importantly, it gave up on the UN, setting aside any effort to use or reform its education bodies in favour of a reliance on the proven, plurilateral OECD and above all, new G7 ministerial level institutions in both the employment and information technology fields.
Denver 1997
The 1997 Summit connected education with both environmental protection and drug-use prevention. 1997 also marked the beginning of the G8's interest in Africa on the education front. Here the Americans began with a narrow trade and investment focus for their African agenda at Denver. However other countries such as Canada pressed successfully for Africa to be dealt with in a much broader fashion. This put political issues such as peace-building and social policy items such as education on the agenda as well.
Cologne 1999
The year 1999 was important for expanding the G8's interest in education both in a development context and as an issue in its own right. The Cologne Debt Initiative instructed the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Paris Club to fund the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) program so that developing countries could divert adequate resources toward the attainment of social goals, such as education (Bayne 2005, 52). Under the leadership of the new German Chancellor and G8 host Gerhard Schroeder, the Cologne Summit also produced the Cologne Charter on Lifelong Learning. It set out specific targets for education, including using exchange programs, information communications technology and distance learning to supplement traditional education systems (Bayne 2005, 53).
Okinawa 2000
The Okinawa Summit in 2000 marked a great leap forward, both by delivering on what had been initiated at Cologne and by adding many new dimensions of its own (Kirton 2002). On April 1-2 G8 Education Ministers met for the first time, as had been promised by the Cologne communiqué (Bayne 2005, 80). On July 8, in Fukuoka, G8 Finance Ministers followed with a communiqué on the
"Impact of the IT Revolution on the Economy and Finance." On July 21-23, the summit itself produced the Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society, dealing with closing the digital divide, access to information, and education. In it the leaders recognized the need to develop, through education, the human resources needed to respond to the demands of an information technology age (Okinawa 2000 Charter on GIS). The leaders at Okinawa, in their main summit communiqué, also discussed social development issues, committing to "Follow up vigorously the conclusions of the recent Dakar Conference on Education by ensuring that additional resources are made available for basic education" (Okinawa 2000 Final Communiqué).
These products were the results of the ability of Japan and its G8 partners to transform an early American interest in addressing information technology in a neo-liberal economic and democratizing political context, into a much broader treatment emphasizing north-south equality and adding the new subject of cultural diversity to the summit's work.
The summit dealt, as its second subject, with the role that information technology did and could play in transforming the world of the twenty-first century. Here the emerging G8 consensus focused on "the revolutionary role of information technology for greater prosperity." This was seen as a multifaceted and positive revolution that does or can help all people. In this discussion the leaders dealt with the remnants of an earlier U.S. proposal to have Okinawa produce a liberalization package offering "four electronic freedoms." It consisted of: first, extending the existing moratorium on the taxation of international e-commerce indefinitely and ensuring that other barriers did not arise to obstruct free trade through this new medium; secondly, giving consumers and businesses abroad the freedom to enjoy this liberated e-commerce behind the border, through an agreement to deregulate telecommunications in G8 countries in ways that eliminated the monopolies and the ensuing high connection charges that impeded the use of e-commerce in countries such as Japan; third liberalizing air cargo services so that consumers ordering seamlessly and inexpensively via the internet from abroad could have their orders fulfilled without the delays and often large proportional expenses incurred in delivery, freight forwarding and customs clearance; and fourth enhancing the way Information Technology (IT) could spread education, cultural exchange and democratic values, by first reaffirming and extending existing commitments entrenched in United Nations-based organizations for the free flow of ideas and information across international boundaries.
In practice Okinawa delivered little of this American-inspired agenda. Within G7 countries, state and other sub-federal authorities affirmed the principle of neutrality of taxation and worried that any further moratorium on taxing electronic commerce would leave them to shoulder the burden of spending more money on IT education, and thus generate more electronic business, while their needed tax revenues disappear. Nor did further action on ending customs clearance come. Much greater emphasis emerged on the Japanese-favoured theme of bridging the digital divide on a north south basis, even as the digital divide within G8 countries was acknowledged. Despite some U.S. reluctance, the Okinawa leaders confronted the absence of international mechanisms to secure coherence in the approach to the digital divide. It established a new governance mechanism - the Dot Force - to bring relevant institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and other stakeholders together. This mechanism was to operate for a few years, under the direction of the G8 chair each year. Its membership embraced G8 countries and those from international organizations, developing countries, and, innovatively, from the NGO community. It thus gave concrete expression to Okinawa's new direction of embracing developing countries and civil society more fully in twenty-first century governance.
The Japanese further succeeded in having the Okinawa leaders go beyond the digital divide -seen by some in the Japanese team as a negative phrase - to address the broader "knowledge divide." As conceived by Japan as host, development was about improving the lives of ordinary citizens in each individual country. As this required the ability to think, read, write and calculate, education
was key. The G8's role was to give life to the existing United Nations agreement that there should be universal education by 2015. Ensuring Africans could receive primary and secondary education in their native languages was a valuable step in overcoming the "knowledge divide."
A further Japanese innovation, personally injected into the summit agenda by Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi, was cultural diversity. It arose in response to concerns, especially in Asia, that globalization was obliterating distinctive cultures in favour of a homogenized Americanism. It survived Obuchi's sudden death, thanks in part to the sympathies of Canada and France, over the skepticism of Obuchi's successor Prime Minister Mori. Mori felt, as a former trade minister, that this concept might serve merely as a refuge for trade protectionists everywhere. In the twenty-first century, as G8 education ministers recognized in April, and as leaders had acknowledged in the Cologne Charter, one needed to know one another, to avoid the vices bred by ignorance. Moreover, as President Clinton highlighted, Silicon Valley showed that "multi-ethnicity" was the source of the U.S. economic dynamism now.
Thus the G8, meeting in its most mono-cultural member, emphasized the need to understand one another across different cultures, in part through the instruments of education and IT. The G8 moved from offering easier access to information technology to providing and preserving richer content and expanding UNESCO's programs to protect the world's intangible heritage. Each G8 country was to develop a program for preserving its intangible heritage, such as minority languages and traditional songs.
Genoa 2001
At Genoa in 2001 "education for development" was the focus. The Dot Force's report, released just prior to the summit, concluded that information technology and knowledge sharing could lead to development and that action should be taken to build human capacity through training and education initiatives. The Italian presidency produced a document entitled Debt Relief and Beyond which dealt extensively with education. The G8 Final Communiqué reiterated the "beyond debt relief' sentiment for supporting education. The summit also generated a forward looking Genoa Plan for Africa. It promised G8 help on various development initiatives, including human development, education and information technology.
"Education for All" received a major boost from Genoa. In April 2000, delegates from 164 countries had met in Dakar, Senegal for the UNESCO World Education Forum. They produced the 2,000-word Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments. It stated that: "we ... commit ourselves to the achievement of education for all (EFA) goals and targets for every citizen and for every society" (UNESCO 2000). At Genoa, the leaders reaffirmed their commitment to meet the goal of universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, support gender equality in education, improve teacher training, build on the work of the Dot Force, and use information communications technology to strengthen educational strategies.
Genoa also developed G8-centered education governance at the official level for the second year in a row. The leaders created a G8 Task Force of senior officials to advise leaders on how to pursue the Dakar Framework, requesting recommendations before their next summit.
Kananaskis 2002
In the lead-up to the 2002 Kananaskis Summit, the Task Force conducted consultations with developed and developing countries, international organizations and civil society representatives. In addition, all interested parties were invited to publicize their views on the appropriate role of the G8 in advancing the EFA process through an e-consultation process between February 8 and April 5, 2002. The World Bank, in support, established an "Education for All Fast Track" and called on the G8 to provide an additional USD $4 billion per annum in order to achieve the EFA goals by 2015 (G8 Research Group 2002).
At Kananaskis, the G8 Education Task Force released their report entitled A New Focus on Education for All. It was devoted exclusively to education and improving its delivery throughout the world. The main recommendations included the need for a strong political commitment in developing countries, adequate resources supplied by increased effective aid, and an improved monitoring system to assess progress in the field of education. The Task Force also referred to the World Bank's list of Education for All Fast Track Initiative countries. The leaders welcomed the report of the Task Force, and endorsed its recommendations. The goal of achieving UPE and promoting gender equality in education by increasing bilateral assistance to developing countries was reiterated by the leaders through its priority placement in the Kananaskis Summit Chair's Summary. But there were no specific monetary commitments, nor any plan to work out specific donor commitments in the future.
Because of the relatively weak commitments, the financing needs for the UPE objectives were not met. The G8 Research Group noted that "Given the crescendo of activity before the Kananaskis Summit, what the G8 needed to do, in Kananaskis, in order to fully comply with their commitment to "help countries meet the Dakar Framework for Action" was to agree to a well-specified increase of bilateral and/ or multilateral aid" (G8 Research Group 2002). The G8 Research Group noted that the New Focus on Education for All document did not provide a consolidated package to ensure that those countries highlighted by the World Bank's Fast Track initiative could meet their UPE goals (G8 Research Group 2002). The G8 Research Group also concluded that the Africa Action Plan represented a missed opportunity for advancing assistance to LDCs to meet their Dakar UPE goal. The leaders' most forceful commitment in terms of aid to Africa for education reads: "in aggregate half or more of our new development assistance could be directed to African nations."
Sea Island 2004
The Sea Island Summit in 2004 shifted the G8's education focus away from Africa toward the Middle East, as part of the Broader Middle East G8 Plan of Support for Reform. The document referenced the literacy goal of the January 2004 UNESCO conference on EFA National Action Plans which were held in Beirut, Lebanon. The G8's Broader Middle East agenda focused on political aspects, such as the Democracy Assistance Dialogue, and on several social goals, including education, increased literacy and training for employment. Education in the realm of training was also a component of the G8 Action Plan on Expanding Global Capability for Peace Support Operations. It aimed to train 75,000 troops for peacekeeping operations in Africa by 2010.
Gleneagles 2005
The 2005 Gleneagles Summit turned the G8 leaders' attention back to Africa, and to primary education for all there. It included references to this issue in both the Chair's Summary and the document on Africa. Following up on the Sea Island Summit, there were also references to education and educational reform in the Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Broader Middle East and North African Region.
Causes of G8 Education Performance
This twenty-first century big bang bust into effective G8 global education governance has been driven by six forces, as the concert equality model of G8 governance highlights. First, after 911 America experienced declining levels of education achievement and inflows of post secondary students from abroad, relative to its G8 and OECD peers. Second, this was despite America's leading public expenditures on education and teachers salaries and the long number of years its students are formally enrolled in school, suggesting that its G8 partners had critical specialized
capabilities that worked. Third, an America domestically ill-equipped for the internet-dependent, knowledge economy of the twenty-first century found little multilateral help from a poorly performing UNESCO an a narrowly focused UNICEF. Fourth, in notable contrast, a G8 devoted to the global promotion of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance found it easy to take up the task of educating an Asia where the free flow of information was still censored, an aging G8 citizenry whose lifelong learning and multicultural welcome had become critical for future economic and social success, and a rapidly democratizing Africa across the new digital divide. Fifth, a new generation of G8 leaders dedicated to education as a domestic priority, led first by Britain's Blair and then America's Bush, brought the topic to a G8 Summit that they and their equally popular colleagues virtually all attended for an unprecedented five years in a row from 2001 to 2005. Sixth, the new 1998 Summit format allowed leaders themselves to deal more freely and flexibly with the often domestic issues such as education that most personally concerned them.
Vulnerabilities
The first cause of the G8's twenty-first century effectiveness in governing global education was American vulnerability, as activated not by shocks but by a gradual decline in American performance in terms of output of quality human capital that is occurring regardless of the money and teachers flowing through the American educational system. This vulnerability gained speed and visibility in 2000, accompanied by widespread fears of Y2K and a potential technological crash. The emerging importance of IT, aggregated by the new dot.com boom at the turn of the century, suggested that IT was the wave of the future and the key to economic prosperity. Those countries that did not embrace IT would undoubtedly be left behind, and concern for the growing digital divide was increasing. The Dot Force, produced at the 2000 Okinawa Summit, was a direct recognition of the new realities of an IT world1. The G8 countries were fearful of being left behind, but they also knew that Africa was at a far higher risk than the G8.
In the new knowledge economy and society of the twenty-first century, lagging educational performance of G8 states, most notably superpower U.S. and relatively weaker Italy, stood out as a vulnerability. As shown by Appendices T and K, the U.S. and Italy are the lowest scoring countries both in terms of problem-solving and math skills. The 2000 host, Japan, is home to the students who rank the highest among G8 nations on the PISA test. Canada, the G8's overall weakest power, came in second.
As the twenty-first century unfolded, the U.S. became significantly less attractive to international students as a destination for higher learning (see Appendix L). The September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, and the stringent national security measures undertaken in America immediately in their wake, made it more difficult for foreigners to enter and study in the United States. The U.S. was losing its ability to attract a new generation of the best global human capital to its shores and to the once highly desirable campuses therein. Germany also saw a small decline in its foreign student population, but the UK, France, Japan and Italy all saw increases, clearly at the expense of the American, and to a lesser extent the German, universities and colleges.
Capabilities
The second cause of G8 performance on education was the G8's global collective predominance and internal equality in educational capability. The G8 countries as a group have higher adult
1 For a full discussion of the DOT Force, see Gina Stephens (2006).
educational attainment in terms of the number of years in formal schooling received than the average of four emerging G20 economies (Australia, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey) and higher than the OECD mean (see Appendix O). While this should stand out as a capability, it does not seem to translate into a higher level of human capital.
Similarly, G8 countries spend huge amounts of public money on their educational systems as a percentage of their GDP (see Appendix M). The United States in particular stands out among the G8 countries as spending the most on education as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total public expenditure in 2002. It is important to note that the U.S. also has a larger, more robust economy producing public spending money and that U.S. President George W. Bush is a big public spender. Moreover, the U.S. has large amounts of private money being spent on the educational system, which is not taken into account by Appendix M. But again, despite a high proportion of GDP being allocated into public education spending, the education results in these countries, particularly the U.S., leave something to be desired.
Teachers in the U.S. and Germany have the highest starting salaries among G8 countries, along with the third and second highest possible salaries within the pay scale respectively (after Japan, which has the highest possible G8 teachers' salary). The G8 teachers' salaries are significantly higher on average than those of the G20, with the exception of Australia, which has similar teachers' salaries as the G8 countries and even more notably South Korea, which has a maximum teaching salary that is some $15,000 more than the highest G8 salary (see Appendix N). But despite the fact that G8 countries pay their teachers well, education performance within the G8 is lagging behind.
Multilateral Organizational Performance
The third cause of high G8 education performance was multilateral organization performance. In the face of American educational vulnerabilities, the major existing multilateral organizations have largely failed to develop an adequate response. UNESCO and UNICEF are the two central multilateral organizations dealing with global educational governance.
UNESCO was founded at the outset of the UN's history in 1945 to deal with development and education in a broad sense. When it has operated as a functional agency, in support of the development of professional education, scientific and cultural capacity in its members countries in both the developed and developing world, UNESCO has performed creditably. Most notably, UNESCO autonomously led many such countries in a concentrated period to establish commonly designed and organized science policy bureaucracies that came to seen as legitimate and be taken for granted (Finnemore 1996). In this tradition it also co-established the United Nations University in Tokyo in 1975, and held the World Conference on Education for All in 1990.
However when UNESCO has taken up divisive political issues well beyond its functional mandate, notably the quest for a new international economic order and new world information order in the 1970's it became discredited in much of the developed world. This led, in League of Nations fashion, led to the withdrawal of leading powers, notably the U.S. in 1984, Britain in 1985 and Singapore the same year. As a result, UNESCO's budget dropped substantially. In 1997 Britain returned. In 1999 Director General Koichiro Matsuura of Japan conducted major reforms and restructuring, helping pave the way for the U.S., under President George W. Bush, to return in 2003. The absence of the US from 1984-2003 and the UK from 1985-1997, together with the resulting reduced resources of UNESCO made it a poor, poorly performing multilateral organization that the major democratic powers could not rely on for effective global education governance. While UNESCO has not been somewhat reformed and rehabilitated, to the point where the US and UK have returned, its long and large legacy means the G8 is reluctant to rely on it to deliver the global education governance and globalized twenty-first century world needs.
The second major multilateral organization in the field of development is UNICEF. It was founded in 1946 to meet the emergency needs of children in post-war Europe, and broadened its mandate in 1950 to address the long-term needs of women and children in developing countries. It has been a proven performer in its specific but critical domains, even as it has expanded to embrace new challenges such as educating children in conflict and promoting gender equality. With volunteer committees and active door-to-door fundraising in many countries, it has much more popular support and budgetary resilience than the regular UN bodies have. Yet it remains highly focused on children, a subject which the G8 (despite its 1990 support for the UN Summit on Children) has seldom taken up. The G8 also has a slender and episodic concern with issues such as gender and conflict prevention that would connect directly with UNICEF's work. And unlike UNESCO, it has not been invited to participate at a G7 or G8 Summit thus far.
As the 1995 Halifax Summit showed, in the face of such multilateral organizational failure in the field of education, the G8 turned first to the OECD as an international institution to implement its work. But it did so even as, and slightly after, it formed it own G8 ministerial bodies, on labour and information technology, with the latter involving many other transition and developing countries in the work. Even as the OECD has expanded to include countries such as Mexico and South Korea, the G8's education agenda has expanded much more, to include all of Africa and the Broader Middle East. This has placed a premium on the development of G8 institutions for global education governance at the ministerial, official and multi-stakeholder level alike. The failure of the OECD to include Russia as a member has propelled this reliance on developing new G8-centered education bodies, and Russia's decision to add a G8 education Ministers meeting in 2006.
Common Principles
The fourth cause of G8 education performance was common principles. Education is directly related to all three components of the G8's founding core mission of globally promoting "open democracy, individual liberty and social advance." As the summit recognized from its early days with its "education for employment connection," education is an important instrument to the economic dimension of social advance. In 1986, it forged the direct connection to individual liberty and open democracy with Tokyo 2's affirmation of the value of education for "living in freedom and dignity." In later years and especially starting in 2000 it expanded the explicit connection more directly into a widening array of social spheres. The connection with individual liberty and open democracy also expanded, first through the "freedom of information" principle pioneered in 1994-5 in regard to the global information society, and then at American initiative in the information technology package at Okinawa in 2000. This principle freedom of information on the internet—established early and becoming central in the twenty-first century—is one that all G8 members share and practice at home. It divides the G8 members decisively from other powerful non-democracies, notably communist China, that are not members of the G8.
It was only in the subsequent twenty-first century summits, however, that the principles of education for social advance and education for open democracy proliferated, acquired priority prominence, were linked to each other, and applied to the broad geographic regions were the democratic revolution had only just begun. The first was Africa, where education for development, health and gender equality provided the link. The second, brought as the summit's priority theme in 2004, was the Broader Middle East G8 Plan of Support for Reform. It focused on both the political aspects of reform, such as the Democracy Assistance Dialogue, as well as the social goals of reform, such as education, literacy and employment training.
Domestic Political Capital
The fifth cause of high G8 education performance was the large domestic political capital of experienced G8 leaders who care. In 1988 Canada's Brian Mulroney as host was personally
committed to literacy in relation to older workers, and sufficiently popular to win a second majority mandate in the general election he called shortly after his Toronto Summit came to its successful end. During these years Margaret Thatcher, had a personal interest in education as a former education minister, and was a domestically popular successfully re-elected politician too.
For the twenty-first century great leap forward, the personally committed, domestically popular, and repeatedly electorally successful Tony Blair in Britain and George Bush in the U.S. took the education lead. At Kananaskis 2002 the lead on education for Africa came from Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, coming off his third majority government electoral success in a row, and supported by a sherpa who had served as an educator in Africa as a young man.
At Sea Island in 2004, the host, U.S. President George W. Bush, was a firm believer in education. He supported the Head Start program in the U.S., an early childhood education program designed to help children succeed in the formal education system. During his first term in office and at the Sea Island Summit, President Bush had high political capital. The strong, focused commitments on education in the Middle East and the high compliance with these commitments at the Sea Island Summit reflect the use of this capital. Despite a second term decline in political capital, President Bush's personal dedication to the education agenda remains strong.
Constricted and Controlled Participation
The sixth and final cause of G8 education performance was the controlled and constricted participation in the G8 club. This small size, legally and organizationally unconstrained assembly of procedural equals made it easier for flexible, innovative, leader's initiated deliberations, directions and decisions to be forged.
Here the first component was a constricted membership among procedurally equal major powers that produced a broad and balanced agenda brought by all, reduced transactions costs and vetoes, and facilitated easy understanding and agreement between member states. Although the G8 expanded from six to nine members over 31 years, it did so very slowly, and retained the small size necessary for a "K-group" to efficiently work. When Canada and the European Union joined the G8 in 1976 and 1977 respectively, they brought with them a myriad of diverse educational experiences and practices that did not translate into concerted education attention immediately. However the 1998 entry into the G8 of Russia, with its traditionally strong educational capabilities and performance, coincided with the great leap forward in the G8's education governance. A mere one year after Russia arrived as a full G8 member the leaders issued a mandate at Cologne to hold the Okinawa Summit. Since Russia has become a member, the G8's attention to education has been focused and sustained. It will reach new height of attention and institutionalization at a minimum as the Russian host in 2006 has made education one of three priority topics, and institutionalized the G8 Education Ministers forum by holding a meeting for the second time.
The component is controlled participation, by bringing to a particular summit those selected non-G8 member countries with the most to contribute to the particular issue at hand. This increases both the depth and breadth of the intelligence available to the G8 leaders in their treatment of a subject, and the legitimacy, global understanding and effective diffusions of the directions and decisions they produce. This process of outreach again coincides with the great leap forward in twenty-first century G8 global education governance. For the 2000 Summit Japanese prime minister Obuchi attempted to secure the presence of four Asian leaders at his 2000 Okinawa Summit, but this endeavor ultimately failed due to a lack of agreement over which leaders would come. However since 2001, the same four leaders of the leading democratic powers of Africa have come to every summit, accompanied by others from Africa and, in 2004, from the broader Middle East. Their participation has directly reinforced the G8's direction setting in education for development and education for democracy and social advance, and its expansion to the least developed countries and peoples and to Africa and the broader Middle East. The addition in 2003 and 2005 of more
systemically significant countries, with the "plus five" powers of India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa at the core, have expanded these dynamics. All of the many countries additions, save for communist China, have reinforced the core democratic character and commitment of the G8 itself.
The third component is the G8's occasional use since 1996 of engaging relevant international institutions at the annual summit (such as the UN, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank) to help formulate educational policy. International organizations have played a role at the summit since their attendance at the 1996 Lyon post-Summit breakfast, and a more vigorous role at Genoa 2001. The G8 also has a history of directing the actions of relevant educational institutions in order to work toward G8-established goals and commitments.
The fourth component is the growing premium on making the summit an occasion for informal, flexible encounters among leaders themselves. The first major move here was the 1998 Toronto Summit format of allocating specific time to let leaders be alone with other like-minded leaders in order to generate unstructured, natural dialogue on education. Since 1998 British prime-minister Blair eliminated foreign and finance ministers from the summit in order to allow more time for spontaneous leaders-only discussions and decision-making. This new summit format corresponds with the great leap forward in G8 global education governance, starting in Bayne's view in 1998 but by all accounts in 1999. As only G8 leaders, unlike their ministers, are all popularly and directly elected, this leaders-only format encouraged leaders to connect more directly with their mobilized citizens at the summit, with the education enhancing results that Bayne, Hart and others highlight.
Conclusion: G8 Education Governance at the St. Petersburg Summit
Propellers of Past Performance: Concert Equality for Effective G8 Education Governance
The G8 has successfully become an effective centre of global education governance in the twenty-first century. As a global education governor, the G8 has soared into sustained high performance across all of its domestic political management, direction-setting, decision-making, delivery and development of global governance tasks as well. Although the G8 has not performed equally well on all of these functions every year, the overall pattern is one of sustained across the board success.
This great leap forward into effective global education governance has been driven by several forces. The first is America's declining level of educational achievement and ability to attract foreign post-secondary students after 911, despite their leading public expenditure on education and teachers salaries and the long number of years its students are formally enrolled in school. America is increasingly illequipped nationally for the internet-dependent, knowledge economy of the twenty-first century and has found little multilateral help from a poorly performing UNESCO, a UNICEF with a partial mandate and an OECD with a partial membership. In contrast, the highly capable countries of the G8 gather in an international institution devoted to the global promotion of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance. The G8 has taken up the task of educating Asia where the free flow of information is still censored, an aging G8 citizenry whose lifelong learning and multicultural openness has become critical for future economic and social success, and a rapidly democratizing Africa across a new north-south digital divide. A new generation of G8 leaders dedicated to education as a domestic priority, led by Prime Minister Blair, President Bush, and now President Putin has brought the education topic to the G8 Summit. The G8's long history of achievement in governing global education means that the 2006 St. Petersburg Summit can look forward to a productive and successful deliberation on education.
Preparations for the St. Petersburg Summit
This analysis suggests that there are promising prospects for a good G8 performance at the St. Petersburg Summit on its priority theme of education. This is especially the case if the subject is advanced, given current conditions, in a way that have generated success in the past.
In preparing the St. Petersburg Summit, the Russian presidency had signaled at an early stage that education would be one of its three presidency priorities, along with international energy security and health as infectious disease. Here the Russians were following a well established summit tradition in selecting such a trilogy, and including among it education, a major G8 agenda item for the past seven years. Yet education as the Russians defined it proved somewhat slow to advance as a topic within the preparatory process, in part because of the relative novelty in a G8 context of the education topic in the particular way the Russians had defined it and because of the differing domestic constitutional systems within consequential G8 colleague countries on the subject of education standards that stood at Russia's proposed core.
Russia began by defining the issue of education in a relative capability, economic and social policy context. It noted that the status of a country is determined by the knowledge and skills possessed by the experts in a society (Russian Federation 2006). Economic growth is largely a product of the development and use of information technology, and thus education is crucial (Russian Federation 2006). The Russian Federation acknowledged that there were notable differences between the educational traditions of G8 countries, but suggested that there were two central problems common to all (Russian Federation 2006). First, there is a weak link between education and labour, which resulted in a gap between what schools teach and what the market requires, in a lack of investment in education, and consequently in a shortage of qualified teachers. Second, there is a large and widening gap between developed and developing countries in terms of ability to adopt and use new technologies in the service sector. This made the populations of developing countries less able to compete on the world market and thus threatened economic growth (Russian Federation 2006). The Russian Federation asserted that education is a condition for personal and national success, and that a "failure to meet the requirements of the modern economy is a global challenge of our times" (Russian Federation 2006).
Such a wide focus and framing followed a fine summit tradition. Yet the central elements of the proposed Russian initiatives on education broke new ground. These were to foster higher and more harmonized standards for teachers, students, professionals and producers of vocational services, both at home and when these internationally mobile human capital providers move from one country to another. They included efforts to preserve and make more available to all peoples the world's store of educational materials, and to exchange students to foster multicultural understanding.
These innovations intruded deeply into sensitive domestic jurisdictional issues within some consequential summit countries and touched on issues, such as migration, that a divided G8 had great difficulty in successfully grappling with in the past. The Russian proposals thus met resistance from its G8 partner governments on several fronts. The United States, where much of the constitutional authority and competence resides at the state and local rather than the federal level, sought to refocus and re-frame the "education" priority as "the knowledge economy." This approach was in accordance with the American emphasis on "the four freedoms" and free e-commerce for Okinawa 2000, and with its position as the leading knowledge economy in the world. The U.S. was a front-line state on the global demographic divide where poor people from the south schemed to enter their rich northern neighbours which were preoccupied with threats from terrorists of global reach. By April, as the St. Petersburg preparatory process matured, migration from Mexico moved to the sensitive, even existential top of the domestic political agenda in the U.S.
Canada, a G8 educational pioneer in 1988, had an even more devolved federal system for education and no minister or department for education in its federal government at all. Canada also contained an active separatist movement in the province of Quebec, where many of all political
persuasions were wary of federal intrusions into its constitutionally guaranteed provincial jurisdiction. Education at the primary and secondary level was not only at the core of these provincial competences, but also closely related to issues of the French language and culture whose survival in North America the provincial government of Quebec felt it was the ultimate guarantor of. Canada thus sought, like the Americans, to reframe the issue into "human capital and productivity," both venerable Canadian concerns that it had emphasized as G8 host at Kananskis in 2002.
In Europe, there was considerable anxiety. France had recently lost a referendum on an EU constitution due to popular fears of more "Polish plumbers" more easily entering to take their jobs. It had an outpouring of suburban violence from disaffected non-mainstream multicultural youth with poor employment prospects. And its government had failed to pass its desired labour law reform aimed at making it easier for employers to create new jobs for youth. The other continental European countries faced similar worries, if to lesser degrees.
In Japan, a rapidly aging population dominated the thinking of its government, and was slowly leading to a revision of the traditional approach. As it had started to signal at Okinawa, an aging Japan knew it needed an innovative approach to lifelong learning and internet technologies to fuel its future economic growth, social security and peace of mind. It also knew it needed more properly integrated immigrants to take care of the jobs its own young people were no longer there in sufficient numbers to do. But its immediate problem was to cope with the declining student demand for its extensive and expensive education system, from the primary to university level. And its people were slow to adopt the welcoming multicultural instinct that its partners across the North Pacific had largely taken for a long time.
Pressures and Prospects
These different approaches within the preparatory process are likely to be pushed by outside pressures towards consensus to a considerable degree as the St. Petersburg summit approaches. For a start there is much built-in momentum provided by the inherited iterative agenda from past summits. The 2005 Gleneagles Summit generated movement on the topic of Africa in their document by that name, where the leaders specifically committed to work to support the Education for All agenda in Africa and the Fast Track Initiative. Six months after Gleneagles, its priority education commitment had received a strong interim compliance score of +56%. A further push came from the extraordinary global public attention and support garnered by the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign where EFA in Africa had an authentic place, and the G8's institutional norms of deferring to prerogatives of the host. The UN's World Summit Conference and Summit in September provided additional attention to the global education for development cause.
During the months leading up to the 2006 St. Petersburg Summit on July 15-17, the proven forces highlighted by the concert equality model are on balance unfolding in ways that push performance forward to a credible if not compelling degree.
To be sure, a collective awareness of common vulnerabilities either old or new have not been activated by any severe shocks of the sort that soaring energy prices and the coming avian flu provide in the other priority areas of energy and health. However the underlying and novel vulnerability of a rapidly aging population is one the Russian host shares with a Japan that has just begun its population shrinkage, and with all other G8 members save Canada and the United States. And in the most powerful of these two reluctant countries, and among the G8 members, educational performance continues to come in low. Moreover both Russia and the U.S. share a common migration related educational vulnerability, if one arising from different sources across the two. In Russia a rapidly declining population increasingly requires professional and vocational services from providers recently transformed from fellow citizens into foreigners by the breakup of the USSR. In the United States and Canada, far less rapidly aging societies also needed large numbers
of well educated immigrants to fill a host of occupations at all skill levels, to provide social services such as publicly funded health care and to keep their vibrantly growing knowledge economies alive.
In the face of these demands bred by vulnerability, the supply of capabilities commanded by the G8 continues to enjoy global predominance and equalization among members within the club. In a United States approaching full employment and worried about outsourcing, an estimated 11 million adults cannot read English. (Shelby 2006). At the same time, despite severe strains on Russia's fraying public education system, it retains both a deep social commitment to education and the legacy of scientific achievement from its Soviet times.
Multilateral organizational performance remains poor, as UNESCO has not yet fully redeemed itself, and Russia remains outside the OECD. Indeed, the U.S. is signaling that Russia should not join the OECD unless it is a member of the WTO, even as it places stringent, and in Russian eyes escalating, conditions on Russia before it is allowed into the WTO.
The foundational common principle of open democracy was directly re-affirmed by President Putin in his national day address in early May. Nor amidst the many complaints about concentrated media ownership, debates about term limits and other components of democracy and freedom have there been any moves, in Russia or in any G8 country, to restrict freedom in the education system or control the internet. Indeed, international concerns about Japanese textbooks glossing over negative aspects of its history have led to calls from its less democratic neighbours for more state interference by the central government in the content of educational materials, rather than less. Within the G8, concerns about Russian recidivism from democracy in principle and performance have not been directed at the education sphere.
The domestic political control and capital the leaders promise to bring to St. Petersburg provided a more mixed and muted picture. The hosts of the past two very high performing summits, America's George Bush in 2004 and Britain's Tony Blair in 2005, have both sunk to their lowest levels ever in their domestic approval ratings in the polls at home in May. Similarly unpopular is France's Jacques Chirac. However Germany's Angela Merkel, Canada's Stephen Harper, and the summit-experienced Italy's Romano Prodi were all arriving with fresh electoral mandates, and Harper's growing popularity would now give him a majority mandate were a general election held. Russia's Vladimir Putin remains highly popular at home, with approval levels of over 70%. He is thus in a position to meet the challenge the summit faced for the first time in six years, of having the veterans from 2001 blend harmoniously with the newcomers for 2006.
Moreover, both old and new leaders will come with a particular interest in education. Bush, as a Spanish-speaking former governor as a large state bordering Mexico, has a deep knowledge of and interest in education, and the migration and multicultural aspects of the file. Moreover, with a wave of mass marches at home over America's treatment of Mexican workers, and Congressional and public resistance for the president's guest worker plan, Bush has an interest in having the summit provide a solutions or an endorsement for how he could move ahead at home. In Britain, Tony Blair's heir, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is promoting through the G7 Finance Ministers process a major initiative to mobilize new G8 money sufficient to finance to achievement of EFA by its MDG target of 2015. From Canada, Stephen Harper is coming with a domestic campaign promise to welcome immigrants and to speed the licensing of new professionals and their integration into the Canadian labour force2. Having just allowed Quebec greater participation in the Canadian delegation to UNESCO, he probably has the political freedom to go further at the G8 on
2
According to John Honderich (2006), in his discussion of John Lorinc's The New City, "The non-recognition of international credentials, according to the Conference Board of Canada, is costing the Canadian economy anywhere from $3.4 billion to $5 billion annually. A total of more than 340,000 Canadians have unrecognized international degrees."
education than otherwise, without arousing complaints and a new cause celebre about intrusion on provincial jurisdiction from separatists at home. From Europe, both Chirac and Merkel could welcome innovative summit action to foster youth employment.
The constricted and controlled participation at the summit should allow these leaders' preferences to come together to produce collective action of a respectable, if not robust sort. While St. Petersburg will gather together the nine G8 leaders, the five plus ones (India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa) and the heads of several international organizations, the summit has dealt with more in the recent past, notably at Evian in 2003. The relatively poor performance of that summit on some measures flowed not from the sheer numbers or particular composition of leaders of countries and multilateral organizations present but from the political divisions within the G8 over the coalition invasion of Iraq that year (See Appendix Q).
Proposals to Enhance St. Petersburg's Performance
These current conditions, when combined with the G8's historic performance on education, point to several evidence-based recommendations for making the St. Petersburg Summit's a stronger success in global education governance. All are affordable, leader-like initiatives that build on past summit traditions and the current progress in the preparatory progress, that take account of the summit's prospective performance in the other priority and built-in agenda areas, and that will appeal to domestic publics within the G8 countries and outside.
1. Priority
The first policy recommendation is to place education, in the chair's summary and throughout the summit meeting, briefing and written record, as a priority co-equal with energy and health, rather than as a most slender theme in a distinct third place. Priority placement is a proven catalyst to boost compliance with commitments made and thus contribute to the credibility of the summit itself. Education as a co-equal priority presents a balanced overall portrait, where each member has capabilities and experience to contribute that the others need. Here Russians formidable capabilities in science and education, from Sputnik to the international space station co-exist with Russia's need to modernize its strained public education system and integrate it with those of its G8 partners. It will also show that Russia has strength in the tertiary, services sector, rather than just rely on extensive resource exploitation to propel its future growth. An equal emphasis on education will soften and modernize the image of the summit, showing it is dedicated to social advance, in ways all citizens can understand ("better schools and teachers for all"), as all G8 members pull together to meet a common twenty first century need ("education for the globalized twenty first century" rather than the Martin Luther age). Education also offers a domain of low cost initiatives, to balance those in higher spending areas such as health.
2. Comprehensiveness
The summit's treatment of education should embrace a comprehensive array of subjects, reflecting the G8's rich history on this subject but adding innovative elements of its own. Thematically and substantively, it should cover all of the economic, social and political-security dimensions of education.
Geographically, it should include issues of concern within the G8 and OECD (high standards harmonization), between the G8 and its immediate neighbors (migration, development in the CIS), and with the developing world and its key regions (EFA, Africa, BMENA). It could also innovatively add Eurasia as a region of emphasis, using the link to health through the role of education in preventing a looming HIV/AIDS pandemic in China, India and Russia itself. It could restore the emphasis on recent, still critical but recently G8-diminshed themes, with targeted messages on children, gender and education for conflict prevention ("no more Rwandas). While
focus and minimalism is often offered as a virtue in crafting agendas nand communiqués, there is no evidence that such a comprehensive and diffuse treatment leads to a lesser summit performance and some reason to believe it producers a higher one. Comprehensiveness also makes it easier for each country to see its preferred priority represented in the collective result.
3. Framing
The G8's treatment of education should be framed in the context of human capital, innovation, freedom and children. Such themes would highlight how education is necessary to succeed in the new knowledge economy, on a lifelong learning basis and with new skills, such as language functionality and fluency, important in a more globalized world. Also highlighted would be the role of education in reducing stigmatization, enhancing social contact and cohesion on a broader scale, enhancing the free flow of ideas, promoting the free flow of and access to information as a human right, and the role of education in ensuring the collective rights of cultural and linguistic diversity. The frame of "education for children" would mobilize the personal domestic political commitment of George Bush, Tony Blair and Stephen Harper, the resources of the well performing UNICEF, and the model of Houston's G7 Summit and the UN's World Summit on Children in New York in 1990.
4. UNICEF
G8 leaders should endorse UNICEF on its sixtieth anniversary as a well designed and well performing international institution, with a tradition of volunteerism and civil society involvement that provides an attractive model for other multilateral institutions now. G8 leaders could also pledge increased contributions to its work, explore how its mandate can be broadened in the fields of education, health and migration, and how UNICEF's leadership could be involved more directly in the work of the G8 system and summit itself.
5. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The G8 should encourage increased Russian involvement in the OECD with a view to full membership in the short term. As the OECD is much more than a trade organization, there is no reason and much cost to making Russia's WTO accession a precondition here. More broadly, the G8 should find ways to involve appropriate "plus five" and G20 members, especially those with high levels of migration with G8 countries, more fully in the OECD's education and other relevant work.
6. Gender
The G8 should focus on gender equality as a principle and product. Educating young girls is the proven high multiplier for development, key to the St. Petersburg health agenda through HIV/AIDS control, and an area where the G8 has lagged and where Russia can credibly lead. It is central to the EFA and MDGs and one of the MDGs that the global community can realistically meet. St. Petersburg could specifically reaffirm the Okinawa Summit's commitment to gender equality by 2005, frankly acknowledging it has not been met but pledging to make sure it is in the coming years.
7. Resources
The G8 should mobilize new money for specific high multiplier programs that have been proven to work. These consist of free school fees, free food at school and free de-worming and other basic health programs at school in Africa and other developing countries. This would further Education for All's Fast Trace Initiative and the Millennium Development Goals. It could serve as a pilot project to prove up the value of Gordon brown's proposed International Finance Facility for education.
8. Scholarships
G8 leaders should create a program of G8 Scholarships to finance the mobility of post-secondary school students and teachers among the G8, following the model of the Fulbright and Commonwealth Scholarship programs and the like. Such a program would produce a high profile, low cost, domestically appealing, concrete St. Petersburg deliverable. It would foster G8 understanding and community. It would also provide a practical pilot program for harmonizing high standards assessment and overcoming international barriers to professional mobility and credentials acceptance. Students from the "plus five" partners and other countries participating in recent summits could be included as well.
9. Academic 8
G8 leaders should further create an Academic Eight (A8) as a permanent consortium to oversee the G8 scholarship program and pioneer the high standards harmonization initiative. It would be composed of the heads of the umbrella organizations for post-secondary education in each G8 country (the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, in Canada). It would follow the model of a similar G8 body for research and development institutions.
10. DOT Force 2
Finally, G8 leaders could launch a new Dot Force for the twenty-first century. It would be focused on the new issues of internet governance, linguistic diversity, education for development, environmental protection and health, and free global information flows.
References
Bayne, Nicholas (2005), Staying Together: The G8 Summit Confronts the 21st Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).
Bayne, Nicholas (2001), "Managing Globalisation and the New Economy: The Contribution of the G8 Summit," in John J. Kirton and George M. von Furstenberg, eds., New Directions in Global Economic Governance: Managing Globalization in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).
Bayne, Nicholas (2000), Hanging in There: The G7 and G8 Summit in Maturity and Renewal (Ashgate: Aldershot).
Canadian International Development Agency (2002), "A New Focus on Education for All." www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida ind.nsf/0/BB74C577F03495FE85256C98005D40A6?0penDocument (March 2006).
Dewitt, David and John Kirton (1983), Canada as a Principal Power: A Study in Foreign Policy and Decisionmaking (John Wiley: Toronto).
Finnemore, Martha (1996), National Interests in International Society (Cornell University Press). G8 (2000), "G8 Communiqué," <www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/2000okinawa/finalcom.htm> (May 2006).
G8 (2000), "0kinawa Charter on Global Information Society," <www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/2000okinawa/gis.htm> (May 2006).
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Kirton, John J. and Junichi Takase, eds. (2002), New Directions in Global Political Governance: The G8 and International Order in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).
Kokotsis, Eleonore (1999), Keeping International Commitments: Compliance, Credibility and the G7, 19881995 (New York: Garland).
Labonte, Ronald and Ted Schrecker (2004), Fatal Indifference: The G8, Africa and Global Health (University of Cape Town Press: Cape Town).
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Mastroeni, Michele (2001), "Creating Rules for the New Global Information Economy: The United States and G8 Leadership," in John J. Kirton and George M. von Furstenberg eds., New Directions in Global Economic Governance: Managing Globalization in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2004), "Knowledge Management: Innovation in the Knowledge Economy: Implications for Education and Learning" (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development: Paris).
Putin, Vladimir (2006), "The Upcoming G8 Summit in St. Petersburg: Challenges, Opportunities, and Responsibility." March 1. <www.g8.utoronto.ca/whatsnew/putin060301.html> (May 2006).
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Putnam, Robert and Nicholas Bayne (1987), Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits, 2nd ed. (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.).
Shelby, David (2006), "Education Cited as Basis for Development, Economic Growth," All American Patriots, May 28.
Stephens, Gina (2006), "G8 Institutionalization as a Cause of Compliance: The DOT Force Case." Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Diego, CA, March 22-25, 2006. <www.g8.utoronto.ca/scholar/stephens_060326.pdf> (May 2006).
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Appendix A:
Pattern of G8 Education Performance (Includes Core and Related Agenda)
Domestic Political Deliberative Directional Decisional: total com't Decisional: money Delivery Dev'l Global Gov G8RG score Bayne score
1975 TBC
1976 TBC
1977 TBC 1 1
1978 TBC 1 1
1979 TBC
1980 TBC
1981 TBC
1982 TBC 1
1983 TBC 1 3
1984 TBC 2 1 C-
1985 TBC 2 2
1986 TBC 1
1987 TBC 2
1988 TBC 4 1 C-
1989 TBC 1 2 B+
1990 TBC 3 3
1991 TBC 3 2
1992 TBC 1
1993 TBC 2 1
1994 TBC 2 1
1995 TBC 1 1
1996 TBC 3 1 +0.57 B
1997 TBC 6 1 +0.38 B C-
1998 TBC 1 2 C
1999 TBC 35 B- B+
2000 TBC 28 1 5 +1.00 1 A/A- B
2001 TBC 9 10 +0.67 1 A/A-/D+ B
2002 TBC 97 2 21 +0.63 B+
2003 TBC 15 1 7 +1.00 B+
2004 TBC 52 2 28 +0.50 1
2005 TBC 28 1 11 +0.56*
Notes:
Deliberative = number of paragraphs in G8 summit documents related to education (core and related). Directional = number of paragraphs in communiqué chapeau or chair's summary related to education. * Interim compliance score.
Appendix B:
Bayne Education-Related Performance Assessments, 1984-2002
1984 London II achievement: debt C-
1988 Toronto achievement: debt relief for poor countries C-
1989 Paris achievement: helping central Europe, environment, debt B+
1996 Lyon achievement: debt, development B
1997 Denver achievement: Russian participation, Africa C-
1999 Cologne achievement: debt, Kosovo, finance B+
2000 Okinawa achievement: outreach, IT B
2001 Genoa achievement: infectious diseases, Africa B
2002 Kananaskis achievement: Africa, WMD B+
Source: Nicholas Bayne (2005) "Staying Together: The G8 Summit Confronts the 21st Century" (Ashgate: Aldershot) pp.18.
Appendix C:
G8 Research Group Education Performance Assessments, 1996-2003
Year Issue Grade
1997 Reaffirm 1994 OECD Job Strategy B
1997 Global Information Society C
1998 Employability A-
1999 Education and Human Capital B-
2000 Information technology A-
2000 Education A
2001 DOT Force A
2001 Africa Action Plan A-
2001 Universal Primary Education D+
2003 Broader Middle East Initiative B+
Appendix D: The G7/8 Core Education Agenda
Total Para. Total Educ. Para. % Educ. EFS HLE DOK IIP KC DF TX DRE AFE PFE HE
1975 15 0 00%
1976 25 0 00%
1977 49 0 00%
1978 51 0 00%
1979 38 0 00%
1980 54 0 00%
1981 52 0 00%
1982 20 0 00%
1983 22 0 00%
1984 59 0 00%
1985 46 0 00%
1986 45 1 02% 1
1987 103 1 01% 1
1988 69 0 00%
1989 122 0 00%
1990 124 1 01% 1
1991 172 0 00%
1992 143 0 00%
1993 77 0 00%
1994 92 1 01% 1
1995 222 0 00%
1996 296 1 <01% 1
1997 147 0 00%
1998 129 0 00%
1999 169 32 19% 1 29 1
2000 213 2 01% 2
2001 108 3 03% 2 1
2002 211 87 41% 1 78* 2 1 1 2 2
2003 427 8 02% 2 6
2004 672 21 03% 4 9 7 1
2005 236 16 07% 2 1 6 7
Notes:
EFS: education for itself, for the future, society, etc. HLE: conference of high level experts on education DOK: diffusion of knowledge IIP: investment in people KC: Koln (Cologne) Charter
DF: Dakar Framework (universal primary education), "Education for All," includes education for girls & women TX: teacher exchanges, teacher training (includes providing teachers with better resources, textbooks, etc.) DRE: debt relief for education AFE: aid for education
PFE: programs for increased enrolment, meet broad community needs for education HE: higher education
1999 marks the introduction of the Cologne Charter, which has its own 28 paragraph document.
* Introduction of the "G8 Education Task Force" to operationalize education for all in the "G8 Africa Action Plan" and "A New Focus on Education for All".
Appendix E: The G7/8 Education-Related Agenda
Year Total Para. Total Education Para. % Education. TYP EAIDS TIP TFM EFD EFE EFD TFS GIS TFP
1975 15 0 00%
1976 25 0 00%
1977 49 1 02% 1
1978 51 1 02% 1
1979 38 0 00%
1980 54 0 00%
1981 52 0 00%
1982 20 0 00%
1983 22 1 05% 1
1984 59 2 03% 2
1985 46 2 04% 2
1986 45 0 00%
1987 103 1 01% 1
1988 69 4 06% 1 3
1989 122 1 01% 1
1990 124 2 02% 1 1
1991 172 3 02% 1 2
1992 143 1 01% 1
1993 77 2 03% 2
1994 92 1 01% 1
1995 222 1 <01% 1
1996 296 2 01% 2
1997 147 6 04% 1 1 1 1 1 1
1998 129 1 01% 1
1999 169 2 01% 2
2000 213 26 12% 1 4 21**
2001 108 6 06% 1 1 3 1
2002 211 10 05% 1 8 1
2003 427 7 16% 1 1 5
2004 672 31 05% 8 2 3 7 8 2 1
2005 236 12 05% 2 1 4 2 2 1
Notes:
TYP: training for employment / flexibility of labour (includes life-long learning, active aging) EAIDS: education to prevent AIDS.
TIP: training for increased productivity, economic growth/reform.
TFM: training for management (including management of biotechnology, agriculture, etc.)
EFD: education for development.
EFE: education for the environment
EFD: education for drug-use prevention
TFS: training for skills (law enforcement, sea farers, judges, journalists, doctors, etc.) GIS: global information society (includes DOT force) TFP: training for peacekeeping
* If the section says "education for increased employment and growth," it will be categorized as TIP. ** 2000 marks the release of a 19 paragraph document on GIS.
Appendix F: G8 Priority Education Directions
2000 Okinawa Preamble (References = 1)
We must bravely seize the opportunities created by new technologies in such areas as information and communications technology (IT) and life sciences.
2002 Kananaskis Chair's Summary (References = 3)
We reviewed implementation of the DOT Force's Genoa Plan of Action and welcomed its initiatives to strengthen developing countries' readiness for e-development, such as the e-model to improve the efficiency of public administrations and to enhance the transparency of national budgeting.
We adopted a series of recommendations to assist developing countries to achieve universal primary education for all children and equal access to education for girls. We agreed to increase significantly our bilateral assistance for countries that have demonstrated a strong and credible policy and financial commitment to these goals.
2003 Evian Chair's Summary (References = 3)
As this contribution should rely more strongly on structural reforms and flexibility, we therefore reaffirm our commitment to:
- raise productivity through education and lifelong learning and by creating an environment where entrepreneurship can thrive, fostering competition and promoting public and private investment in knowledge and innovation;
2004 Sea Island Chair's Summary (References = 3)
Adopt a G-8 Plan of Support for Reform, which commits us to intensify and, in partnership with the region, expand our already strong individual and collective engagements, and launch new initiatives to support: democracy, literacy, entrepreneurship/vocational training, microfinance, and small business financing, among other things.
We supported progress in the multilateral effort against corruption and welcomed the completion of Comprehensive Anti-Corruption Compacts with Georgia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Peru. We noted the role information technology can play in promoting transparency.
2005 Gleneagles Chair's Summary (References = 2)
The G8 and African leaders agreed that if implemented these measures and the others set out in our comprehensive plan could:
• get all children into primary school
• deliver free basic health care and primary education for all
Appendix G: G7/8 Education Commitments
Year Overall Education (core) Education (related) Ratio (education/overall) Follow/ Support IO Lead IO Independent of IO
For Core Commitments Only
1975 14 0 0
1976 7 0 0
1977 29 0 1 03%
1978 35 0 1
1979 34 0 0
1980 55 0 0
1981 40 0 0
1982 65 0 0
1983 38 0 3 08%
1984 31 0 1 03%
1985 24 0 2 08%
1986 39 0 0
1987 54 0 0
1988 27 0 1 04%
1989 61 0 2 03%
1990 78 1 2 04% 1
1991 53 0 2 04%
1992 40 0 0
1993 29 0 1 03%
1994 53 0 1 02%
1995 76 0 1 01%
1996 128 0 1 01%
1997 111 0 1 01%
1998 73 0 2 03%
1999 46 0 0
2000 163 1 4 03% 1
2001 58 6 4 17% 3 1 2
2002 188 12 9 11% 3 2 7
2003 206 0 7 03%
2004 265 8 20 11% 2 6
2005 212 5 6 05% 1 4
Total 2120 33 70 03% 7 6 20
Lead International Organization (IO): The initiative is in collaboration with another International Organization and instigated by the G8, or the initiative is in the form of instructions to another International Organization. Follow International Organization (IO): The initiative is in collaboration with another International Organization who has acted as the instigator. Independent: There is no mention in the initiative of involvement of another International Organization.
Appendix H:
Compliance with G8 Education Commitments, 1996-2005
Issue Area Lyon 96-97 Denver 97-98 Birmingham 98-99 Cologne 99-00 Okinawa 00-01 Genoa 01-02 Kanana-skis (final) 02-03 Evian (final) 03-04 Sea Iceland (final) 04-05 Glen-eagles (interim) 05-06 Ave.
TOTAL (average n.) +57% (1) +38% (1) +100% (1) +67% (2) +63% (1) +100% (1) +50% (1) +56% (1) +59% (9)
UPE/Education for All +0.58 +0.63 +1.00 +0.56 +69% (4)
Digital Divide/DOT Force +1.00 +0.75 +88% (2)
Employment +0.38 +38% (1)
GIS +0.57 +57% (1)
Teacher Training +0.50 +50% (1)
Commitments Assessed
1996
1996-94. We will support public and private efforts to increase the use of information and communication technologies for development and encourage international organizations to assess the appropriate role which they can play. (+0.57)
1997
1997-S146. Measures that expand the availability of high quality education and training and increase the responsiveness of labor markets to economic conditions will aid the ability of our people to adjust to all types of structural changes. (+0.38)
2000
2000-16. We will set up a Digital Opportunities Task Force (dot force), which will be asked to report to our next meeting its findings and recommendations on global action to bridge the international information and knowledge divide. (+1.00)
2001
2001-29 / 2001-30. We reaffirm our commitment to help countries meet the Dakar Framework for Action goal of universal primary education by 2015... We will help foster assessment systems to measure progress, identify best practices and ensure accountability for results. (+0.58)
2001-38. We will continue to support the process and encourage all stakeholders to demonstrate ownership, to mobilize expertise and resources and to build on this successful cooperation.
2001-39. We will review the implementation of the Genoa Plan of Action at our next Summit on the basis of a report by the G8 Presidency.
2001-40. We also encourage development of an Action Plan on how e-government can strengthen democracy and the rule of law by empowering citizens and making the provision of essential government services more efficient. (+0.75)
2002
2002-93. Supporting the development and implementation by African countries of national educational plans that reflect the Dakar goals on Education for All, and encouraging support for those plans - particularly universal primary education - by the international community as an integral part of the national development strategies; (+0.63)
2003
2003-4. We reaffirm our commitment to raise productivity through education and lifelong learning and by creating an environment where entrepreneurship can thrive, fostering competition and promoting public and private investment in knowledge and innovation. (+1.00)
2004
2004(4)-11: Training teachers in techniques, including on-line learning, that enhance the acquisition of literacy skills among school-aged children, especially girls, and of functional literacy skills among adults; (+0.50)
2005
2005(3)-36. As part of this effort, we will work to support the Education for All agenda in Africa, including continuing our support for the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) and our efforts to help FTI endorsed countries to develop sustainable capacity and identify the resources necessary to pursue their sustainable education strategies. (+0.56)
Appendix I: G7/8-Centred Education Institutions
Working Group on Technology, Growth and Employment (1982-1986)
The Working Group on Technology, Growth and Employment was launched at the 1982 Summit to work with international institutions, particularly the OECD, to develop programs to create the appropriate economic, social and cultural conditions where technology will develop and flourish. The working group's final report was commented on at the 1986 Summit.
Digital Opportunities Task Force (Dot Force) (2000-2001)
The Dot Force was established in 2000 to recommend global action to bridge the international information and knowledge divide. They released their report in 2001.
G8 Task Force on Education (2001-2002)
The 2001 Genoa Communiqué noted that "We will establish a task force of senior G8 officials to advise us on how best to pursue the Dakar goals in co-operation with developing countries, relevant international organisations and other stakeholders. The task force will provide us with recommendations in time for our next meeting" (Genoa, 22 July, 2001, Communiqué). In 2002, the task force released their document "A New Focus on Education for All," which also incorporated opinions from individuals and organizations.
Appendix J:
Percentage of Students at Each Proficiency Level on the OECD PISA Problemsolving Scale, 2003
Below Level 1 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Japan 10 20 34 36
Canada 8 27 40 25
France 12 28 37 23
Germany 15 28 36 22
United States 24 34 30 12
Italy 25 35 30 11
G6 Average 15.7 28.7 34.5 21.5
OECD Average 17 30 34 18
Note: No data available for Russia or the UK.
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/29/35282731.xls>
Appendix K:
Percentage of Students at Each Proficiency Level on the OECD PISA
Mathematics Scale, 2003
Below Level 1 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6
Japan 4.7 8.6 16.3 22.4 23.6 16.1 8.2
Canada 2.4 7.7 18.3 26.2 25.1 14.8 5.5
Germany 9.2 12.4 19.0 22.6 20.6 12.2 4.1
France 5.6 11.0 20.2 25.9 22.1 11.6 3.5
United States 10.2 15.5 23.9 23.8 16.6 8.0 2.0
Italy 13.2 18.7 24.7 22.9 13.4 5.5 1.5
G6 Average 7.6 12.3 20.4 20.1 20.2 11.4 4.1
OECD Average 8.2 13.2 21.1 23.7 19.1 10.6 4.0
Note: No data available for Russia or the UK.
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/30/35282712.xls>
Appendix L:
Percentage of Foreign Tertiary (University) Students Enrolled in G8 Countries,
1998, 2003
2003 1998
United States 31.1 33.3
United Kingdom 13.5 12.2
Germany 12.8 13.2
France 11.8 11.4
Japan 4.6 2.8
Italy 1.9 1.8
Average 21.6 12.4
Note: No data available for Canada or Russia.
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/44/35287269.xls>
Appendix M:
Total Public Expenditure on Education in G8 Countries, 1995, 2002
2002 2002 1995 1995
(as percentage of total public expenditure) (as percentage of GDP) (as percentage of total public expenditure) (as percentage of GDP)
United States 15.2 5.6 n/a n/a
United Kingdom 12.7 5.3 11.4 5.2
France 11.0 5.8 11.3 6.0
Japan 10.6 3.6 11.1 3.6
Russia 10.4 3.7 n/a n/a
Italy 9.9 4.7 9.1 4.9
Germany 9.8 4.8 9.7 4.6
Canada n/a n/a 13.1 6.5
G8 Average 11.4 4.8 11.0 5.1
Australia 14.3 5.0 13.7 5.2
Argentina 13.8 4.0 n/a n/a
Brazil 12.0 4.0 11.2 3.4
India 11.4 3.4 11.2 3.4
Indonesia 5.9 1.2 n/a n/a
Mexico 23.9 5.3 22.4 4.6
South Korea 17.0 4.2 n/a n/a
Turkey n/a 3.6 n/a 2.4
G20 (-G8) Average 12.2 3.8 14.6 3.8
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/9/35286445.xls> (May 2006).
Appendix N:
Teachers' Salaries (using PPP), at Primary, Lower Secondary and Higher Secondary Levels, at Lowest and Highest Pay Brackets, 2003
Primary Lower Secondary Higher Secondary
Lowest Highest Lowest Highest Lowest Highest
Germany 38.216 49.586 39.650 50.949 42.881 54.928
United States 30.339 53.563 30.352 52.603 30.471 52.745
United Kingdom 28.608 41.807 28.608 41.807 28.608 41.807
Japan 24.514 57.327 24.514 57.327 24.514 59.055
France 23.106 45.861 25.564 48.440 26.035 48.956
Italy 23.751 34.869 25.602 38.306 25.602 40.058
G6 Average 28.089 47.169 29.048 48.239 29.685 49.592
Australia 28.642 42.057 28.865 42.078 28.865 42.078
Argentina 6.901 11.612 9.459 15.929 9.459 15.929
Brazil 8.888 13.292 12.138 17.444 15.494 17.908
India 11.735 18.163 14.252 23.197 17.313 27.381
Indonesia 1.002 3.022 1.002 3.022 1.042 3.022
Mexico 12.688 27.696 16.268 35.056 N/a N/a
South Korea 27.214 74.965 27.092 74.843 27.092 74.843
Turkey 12.903 16.851 n/a n/a 11.952 15.900
G20 (-G8) Average 13.747 28.152
OECD mean 24.287 40.539 26.241 43.477 27.455 45.948
Note: No data available for Canada or Russia.
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/59/35287577.xls> (May 2006).
Appendix O:
Average Adult Educational Attainment, by Number of Years in Formal
Education (2003)
Total Male Female
Unites States 13.8 13.8 13.9
Germany 13.4 13.7 13.1
Canada 13.1 13.0 13.1
United Kingdom 12.7 12.8 12.6
Japan 12.4 12.6 12.1
France 11.5 11.7 11.4
Italy 10.0 10.2 9.9
G7 Average 12.4 12.5 12.3
Australia 12.9 13.0 12.8
Mexico 8.7 8.9 8.5
South Korea 11.9 12.4 11.3
Turkey 9.6 9.9 9.3
Average (4) 10.8 11.1 10.5
OECD Mean 12.0 12.1 11.9
Notes: No data available for Russia.
An "adult" in this study is between the ages of 15-64 years.
Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/35/35282639.xls> (May 2006).
Appendix P:
Participation Rate in Formal and/or Non-Formal Training, 2003
Total Males Females
United Kingdom 38 37 39
Canada 37 35 38
France 21 22 20
Germany 15 16 14
Italy 9 9 9
Average 24 23.8 24
Note: No data available for USA, Japan or Russia. Source: OECD <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/62/35287495.xls>
Appendix Q:
International Organizations at the Annual G8 Summit
Year
International Organization, Head of International Organization
1996 Lyon
2001 Genoa
2002 Kananaskis
2003 Evian
2005 Gleneagles
2006 St.-Petersburg
1) United Nations, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
2) International Monetary Fund, Managing Director Michel Camdessus
3) World Bank, President James Wolfensohn
4) World Trade Organization, Director-General Renato Ruggiero
1) United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan 1) United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
1) United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
2) World Bank, President James Wolfensohn
3) International Monetary Fund, Managing Director Horst Köhler
4) World Trade Organization, Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi
1) Commission of the African, Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare Union
2) International Energy Agency, Executive Director Claude Mandil
3) International Monetary Fund, Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo
4) United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
5) World Bank, President Paul Wolfowitz
6) World Trade Organization, Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi
1) Commission of the African Union, Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare
2) CIS, Chairman-in-office Nursultan Nazarbayev
3) International Energy Agency, Executive Director Claude Mandil
4) International Atomic Energy Agency, Director-General Mohammed El Baradei
5) UNESCO, Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura
6) World Health Organization, Acting Director-General Dr. Anders Nordström
(7) United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
