Education Q&A with UNESCO's Irina Bokova

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UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova answers crowdsourced questions for the Global Education and Skills Forum, 2014.

Questions:
-- What is UNESCO doing to improve girls' education?

-- What kind of system should be implemented to strike a balance between cultural and international needs?

-- What is the single most powerful strategy to get all children in the world into school?

-- How are advances in technology, particularly in online learning, impacting global education? How does this differ when teaching hard skills versus cultivating social and emotional competencies?

Transcript-- We do believe at UNESCO and I personally am very much committed to girls' education and women's empowerment. I do believe in the first place that education is one of the best investments in order to achieve sustainability in any development but particularly girls. Because in many parts of the world girls are a synonym with poverty in the rural areas. Girls are the marginalized communities in the communities. There are still a lot of stereotypes and because poverty has sometimes a women's face. Investing in girls' education and we have a lot of data, a lot of research in this particular area -- improves communities standard of living, eradicates poverty, has a particularly important and positive impact on health. We know that educated women that have passed through primary education are caring better for their children, for their families. And also for the environment. Investing in girls' education is also one of the main, I would say, objectives of education for all which is the second millennium development goal.

And without achieving gender parity in primary education and also moving to the secondary education, we cannot achieve also what nowadays is considered one of the objectives of the international community to eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2030. And why we speak now about girls' education? Because still in equalities are there. Only 58 percent of the countries have achieved gender parity in primary education and only 38 percent gender parity in secondary education. When girls are in school and our appeal is let's keep girls in school. They marry late, they get pregnant late. When they're in school they're much more protected, you know, if not to get contaminated with some diseases. And they're less also protected -- I would say protected against violence. Keeping girls in school after primary education is the best investment in our development.

Well I believe that in terms of education it's a value in any society. Education is, I would say also a cultural event in many societies. Although we know that stereotypes sometimes put girls in marginalized also populations in disadvantage. We believe that if we unite around education, religious leaders traditionally there is in many communities. Of course having a very focused public policies and government commitments and make an education a true value for families. We will then achieve also sustainability in all our development efforts. We don't believe that there is juxtaposition between cultural values and educational values. We do believe that if we put it right, if we unite around this idea of education being one of the best investment for having healthy families, for having healthy communities, for having also I would say a better living. Education is a better living also for these communities and these families then we can convince also everybody and unite around achieving this important goal of access to quality education and lifelong learning for all.... [transcript truncated].

Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler