Spellings Leads U.S. Delegation To First Meeting On Education Between World's Leading Industrialized Countries

AMMAN, Jordan—U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings led the United States delegation to the first-ever meeting of education ministers from the countries of the G8 and the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA), held at Dead Sea, Jordan from May 22 to 23.

Jordan, the host country, invited education officials and civil- and private-sector representatives from 30 countries to participate. The goal of the ministerial is to ensure that all citizens, including women and girls, receive an education relevant to the needs of modern economies and democratic societies. The participants of this first education ministerial meeting discussed their role in helping to establish education reform as a priority item on the full agenda of the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative. The meeting is a follow-up to the G8 meeting last year at Sea Island, Ga., where the United States joined its G8 partners in committing to help the countries of the BMENA region implement education reforms and expand the reach of literacy to 20 million more people over the next decade.

In addition to the participation in the ministerial, Spellings met with Jordan's Queen Rania Al-Abdullah and Minister of Education Khaled Toukan. During her trip, Spellings will visit the Iskan Al-Jamiaa Discovery School and a U.S. Agency for International Development (AID)-funded public kindergarten, and will meet with Junior Achievement graduates and early childhood education stakeholders.

"I am pleased and honored to be the first U.S. secretary of education to travel to Jordan," said Spellings in her keynote address at the ministerial today. "I believe today's meaningful dialogue is a first step toward greater cooperation and progress in achieving educational opportunity for all. Although we come from many nations, we share some things in common, namely, a passion for education and an understanding of its importance. In the words of the Arab proverb, 'What is learned in youth is carved in stone.' Education is a shared value among all our nations. And it is the key to progress and development—the development of a region, a nation and an individual life. We all want the very best future for our children and ourselves, and the very best way to do that is through literacy and education.

"Decades ago, education might have been viewed as a luxury or a privilege. Today, it is an imperative. Learning and literacy are critical to fostering cultural understanding among nations, and they are critical to economic growth and trade among nations. Together, we are addressing the critical success factors for reform on a broad scale, focusing on literacy and access, promoting equity and social inclusion, and ensuring education's quality and relevance."

According to the 2003 United Nations Arab Human Development Report on education, the Arab region faces challenges related to the "deficits in knowledge, freedom and women's empowerment" that threaten the region. According to some estimates, 65 million adults are illiterate, two-thirds of them women. Ten million children in the region do not attend school, according to the United Nations; that figure is projected to increase by 40 percent by the year 2015. Spellings noted that the United States also faces some education challenges. "In my own country, over one-third of American fourth-graders, and one-quarter of our eighth-graders are not reading at what we have defined as the basic level on our most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We also face a large educational achievement gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' It's a challenge we all face in the global community."

During the meeting, four roundtables addressed issues of: critical success factors for education; literacy and access; equity and social inclusion; and quality and relevance. Ministers of education and other high-ranking officials from the countries of Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, France and the United Kingdom also made remarks at the G8-BMENA Education Ministerial.

Other members of the U.S. delegation include Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Thomas Farrell; Director of the Office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative/U.S. Department of State's Alina Romanowski; and U.S. Agency for International Development Assistant Administrator James Kunder.

"This must be a region-led effort, with each individual nation determining its own priorities and needs," stressed Spellings. "We are here at this ministerial to share ideas and set goals. We share more than just a respect for the transforming power of education. We also share a common purpose and values—the values of human dignity, democracy, economic opportunity and social justice. By this work we are paying tribute to the rich literary, intellectual and cultural history of this region—its extraordinary inheritance of poetry, philosophy and the sciences, venerable history and sacred scripture."