Year  | 2000 |  | 2001 |  | 2002  |  |  2003  |  |  2004  |  | 2005  |  | 2006 |  |  2007  |

KEDI Forum on Development Models for Secondary Education

The Center co-sponsored with the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) the forum on Development Models for Secondary Education in Southeast Asia, held from 19 to 21 December 2005 in Quezon City, Philippines.

The forum facilitated the fruitful exchange of country experiences and innovative approaches in improving the quality of and access to secondary education throughout the region. The need for policies on several concerns surfaced and was thereby addressed by the select group that comprised the forum. The group was composed of representatives from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea.

During the course of the three-day event, the group identified points of concerns that included, among others, the appropriate number of years for the secondary education cycle, the language of instruction to use—whether to use the bilingual approach or the native language along, and the necessity of building strong educational foundation.

The representatives from Vietnam and Cambodia recommended the adoption of Malaysia's system of boarding school in the remote areas in their countries. This type of schools, referred in Malaysia as "fully residential schools," offers free quality secondary education for children of poor families in urban and remote areas. The selected students were from low-income families and were considered to be "high achievers" based on their performance in co-curricular activities and scores in the public exam given on their sixth grade in the primary level.

Several countries proposed to adopt the contextualized learning models being promoted under SEAMEO INNOTECH Project APEX. The Project has different models tailor-made for each of its project sites. In general, the Project intends to provide students with basic entrepreneurial competencies through contextualized teaching and learning, career preparation, and enterprise preparation programs.

Korea expressed interest in adapting Singapore's professional development program for teachers that has enable them to improve their teaching styles and keep abreast of recent developments in education.

The list of proposed courses os action would be submitted to the respective Ministries of Education of each forum participant.

TOP