Plan with Youth - Engaging Youth in Planning Education for Social Transformation - Summary Report

Since the establishment of the Education for All (EFA) goals at the World Education Forum and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the Millennium Summit over a decade ago, education has retained its prominence on national and international agendas as a key component of sustainable and equitable development and growth. The criticality of education as a fundamental pillar of development was most recently reinforced with the launch of the United Nations (UN) Global Education First Initiative: a four-year programme to bolster global action on education. Youth are an obvious stakeholder in this agenda as they are the front-line and direct beneficiaries of education systems. Yet youth involvement in developing the policies and programmes that affect them has often been slow. After the UN proclaimed the year 1985 as the International Youth Year, a World Congress on Youth was hosted by the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Barcelona, Spain. One of the main outcomes of this congress was the understanding of the importance of recognizing the civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights of young people ‘so that they can play a more direct and prominent role in political institutions’ (UNESCO, 1985: 4) and engage more actively in their societies. Yet it took over a decade after this event for initiatives such as the UNESCO Youth Forum to be established in 1999 as a biannual event. This report offers an overview of each session of the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) Policy Forum help in Paris in October 2012. It concludes by offering recommendations for improving youth engagement in education planning systems.