The blog presents the June International Conference on Adult Education – CONFINTEA VII. We begin the article by describing the course of the conference and continue with two contributions from members of the Slovenian delegation and our experience of the conference.

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From 15 to 17 June 2022, Teja Dolgan (from the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports – MESS), Dr Nataša Potočnik and Jasmina Mirčeva, MSc, (both from the Slovenian Institute of Adult Education – SIAE) attended the International Conference on Adult Education entitled Adult Learning and Education for Sustainable Development – a Transformative Agenda – CONFINTEA VII. More than 1,000 representatives participated in the conference live and online, including heads of state, ministers of education and high-level representatives of the UN.

The day before the start of the high-profile event, three forums were organised: Civil Society Forum, Youth Forum and Private Sector Forum. The participants discussed the challenges and priorities in the mentioned fields in different regions of the world. They prepared a set of recommendations later addressed in the conference's central part.

As part of the conference (programme), six plenary lectures and twenty workshops were held, all on the topic of adult learning in connection with climate change, the right to lifelong learning, literacy, the use of modern technology in education and the future of work and learning cities. Participants discussed how to harness the transformative power of ALE for sustainable development in the context of challenges such as the climate crisis, rapid technological advances and the changing world of work.

The CONFINTEA International Conference is held every 12 years to set guidelines for ALE in the next decade. The first was held in 1949 in Elsinore, Denmark, followed by a conference in Montreal (Canada) in 1960. It was held in Tokyo, Japan, in 1972, Paris in 1985, Hamburg in 1997 and Belém (Brazil) in 2009.

At the Belém Conference, a Framework for Action (BFA) was adopted. Based on it, the participating countries have committed to supporting six key areas of ALE: policy, governance, financing, inclusion, participation and quality. Their realisation was published in the Global Report on Adult Learning and Education – GRALE 5 and presented at the international conference at Makaresh. A key message of UNESCO's Fifth Global Report is that education is not reaching those adults who need it most.

The new Framework for Action on ALE adopted at the Makaresh Conference has replaced the BFA. Representatives of more than 140 countries have pledged to make the vision of the right to lifelong learning a reality. They will significantly increase the participation of adults in learning and implement greater financial investments in ALE.

As part of the conference, the publication Making Lifelong Learning a Reality, published by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning – UIL, was promoted. The handbook includes information and basic conceptual models to facilitate lifelong learning at national and local levels. It presents international experiences and offers guidelines for the operationalisation of lifelong learning in response to the main issues of sustainable development in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is intended as a source of inspiration and a guide for policymakers and officials responsible for implementing lifelong learning policies. An electronic version is available online, while the printed version is available in the SIAE Library.

Jasmina Mirčeva, MSc, is employed at the Slovenian Institute for Adult Education as a senior researcher. Among other things, she coordinated the preparation of the CONFINTEA national reports.

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As the Head of the Adult Education Unit at MESS, I participated in an event such as the CONFINTEA VII conference for the first time. It was an exciting experience but at times also tiring, as the panel discussions and workshops were held from morning to evening. In addition, the Marrakesh heat combined with the powerful air conditioners in the halls added their toll. And yet the conference was an event worth attending. With my colleagues from the SIAE, we agreed to participate in different parallel workshops to cover the various aspects of adult education as much as possible. I decided on the following topics:

• ALE and Decent Work: Recognising and Developing Skills for Employability and Decent Work,
• Current Challenges of Educational Governance: Innovate to Protect and Progress,
• Open Educational Resources and Lifelong Learning: Current Trends and Future Perspectives.

The conference offered a wide range of topics and a varied selection of speakers who presented significant findings, countries' views, solutions and examples of good practices in plenary or discussions.

What did I get out of the conference? It made me think that it is necessary to have open eyes and ears wherever there is talk of adult education – especially when it comes to systemic solutions in individual countries. Through exchanging knowledge, experiences and opinions, we must build awareness of what are the possibilities of the system, what makes sense and what is also effective. Creating an efficient and sustainable system that enables all residents to access adult education and lifelong learning is essential. The latter especially applies to those who do not yet realise they need it or do not have access due to various systemic and situational obstacles.

With the adoption of the Marrakesh Framework for Action (the document will be translated into Slovenian), all UNESCO member states have committed to realising the right to lifelong learning, improving the management and quality of ALE and increasing investments in support of that. They have committed to putting inclusion at the heart of these efforts, ensuring that those most often left out would benefit from lifelong learning. Achieving these goals will require a lot of collaborative work from all stakeholders.

Teja Dolgan heads the Adult Education Unit at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports.

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I was a member of the Slovenian delegation at this year's CONFINTEA Conference as the Director of the SIAE. Below are my impressions from the conference:

I attended the International Conference CONFINTEA for the first time. I was impressed by the commitment of the participating countries. Namely, on the topic of the right to ALE, several countries do not have many opportunities to be heard and seen in their efforts to improve basic skills, active citizenship, inclusion, etc.

The UNESCO conference gave a voice to all the participants. They showed respect for the efforts of all the participating countries invested in the realisation of the human right to lifelong learning and education already with the choice of venue and the extraordinary kindness of the organisers from Morocco.

Despite everything, it was shocking to hear from the opening reports and speeches that 770 million people still do not read and that 50% of the people are without digital competence. There is not enough investment in ALE, and the existing ones are not aimed at those who need it the most. All this was already written in the Belém Agreement (in the Framework for Action adopted in 2009 at the Belém Conference), so the participants of the Marrakesh Conference accepted the new Framework with thunderous applause. According to everything seen and heard during the very active conference days, the latter meant hope and commitment to implement the main commitments that remained unfulfilled to this day and to increase investment in adult education significantly.

We must understand ALE as a public good, a right given to us throughout our entire life span. In doing so, we must include adults in decisions concerning their learning, meaning we must see civil society as an equal partner of the government.

The conference brought many other messages and conclusions – from the importance of literacy (especially for active citizenship), the promotion of critical thinking, flexible forms of learning and education in line with the labour market and the opportunities for digitisation for the entire field of lifelong learning, to the importance of training adult educators, career guidance and validation and recognition of acquired knowledge.

Of course, everything was permeated with the issue of solving the climate crisis and sustainable development, as defined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And all the speakers agreed that developing civic competence (especially for active citizenship and social inclusion) is the key to solving this and other challenges of modern society.

We already have descriptors for social and civic competences in Slovenia – but how efficient are we in their implementation?

Dr Nataša Potočnik is the directress of the Slovenian Institute of Adult Education.