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OAS Secretary General Highlights Need to “Govern Education” to Improve Competitiveness in the Americas

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, said today during the Fifth Americas Competitiveness Forum, being held October 5 to 7 in Santo Domingo, that the countries of the region need to “govern education” to improve their competitiveness at the global level.

During his participation in the plenary session titled, “Education and Competitiveness from the Perspective of Multilateral Organizations,” the head of the OAS recalled that in the countries of the Americas there is not only a problem of investing in education, but also a problem of strategic planning. “Education in our countries is not governed, it is not led in the direction in which countries want it to go,” he said. “It is not tied to great development objectives or to the great strategies for economic and social development of countries. It is an activity that is not governed, and that is a great contradiction,” he added.

As an example, the Chilean diplomat mentioned the case of countries that have an “ideal” access to university education, but where the costs of private education are “very high,” while its quality is “sometimes low.” “This is not an issue of lack of attention, because the State has made a significant effort so that young people can go to university,” he explained. “The inability to govern higher education is what has created this situation of enormous frustration,” he added.

Referring to the Global Competitiveness Report of 2011-2012, Secretary General Insulza said the poor quality of educational systems in some nations of the continent pose an obstacle to “the capacity of the economy to generate, diffuse and use the knowledge that can be brought to the market in the form of new products or services.” “This challenge is projected for all countries and especially those of our region,” he said.

The head of the hemispheric organization asserted that “the citizens of the Americas are seeing education more and more as a right, and this does not refer solely to access to education, but rather they demand an education that would allow them to prepare for productive activities from the intellectual and material points of view, among others.” The OAS Secretary General added that education must be a public responsibility, “though it isn’t just a social responsibility of the State, but also of the private sector, the business sector,” he explained.

In this context, he congratulated the representatives of the Member States of the OAS, gathered this week in Santo Domingo on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the Inter-American Competitiveness Network (RIAC), who approved a document titled, “Consensus of Santo Domingo,” thus establishing ten principles to move forward towards a more competitive and prosperous region.

At least four of those principles, said Secretary General Insulza, have a “direct relationship” to the issues of education: to promote high-quality education; to prioritize the development of human capital, work training and the acquisition of new skills; to position innovation as a determining factor for competitiveness; and to promote efficiency and energy sustainability. “What this means is that we need to very significantly strengthen our investment and our public-private interests in matters of education,” he concluded.

On the panel, the Secretary General of the OAS was joined by the Managing Director of the World Bank, Sri Mulyani Indrawati; the Corporative Vice President of the Latin American Development Bank – CAF, Lilliana Canale; the Vice President of the Private Sector of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Steven Puig; and the Principal Associate at Mckinsey & Company of Colombia, Jaime Morales. The event was moderated by Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Comisión for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-877/11