East–West partnerships: lessons from UNESCO and Eidos

Abstract

This article draws lessons from experience at UNESCO and Eidos pertinent to the issues of developing East-West Partnership in education. For the past 60 years, UNESCO’s mission has been to promote international co-operation. It has been very much involved in promoting intellectual co-operation among the professional leaders in education. Eidos is a consortium linking three Queensland Government Departments and seven of its universities that are committed to building collaborative research and policy capacity and to ensuring that research informs educational policy and practice. The experience of UNESCO indicates that to be successful, partnerships must focus on shared goals and mutual advantages. Partners must be prepared to meet their commitments and abide by agreed standards, and there needs to be effective monitoring of performance. The Eidos experience confirms that maintaining partnerships is not easy in a highly competitive environment, but that we must harness the collective expertise of researchers and policy makers if we are to develop innovative solutions to the complex problems facing our education systems.