Seminar participants, despite lively debate, developed a common view on a range of issues vital to the future of the State and its education sectors. Those common views are expressed here as resolutions of the seminar, in three sections:

• General Conclusions and Recommendations;
• Comments and Resolutions on Specific Themes;
• Proposals for Action.

General Conclusions And Recommendations

 Seminar participants from a wide range of education and training backgrounds

• strongly endorsed the relevance of the Delors pillars for planning and delivering education in South Australia;
• noted the challenge of resolving tensions between the four pillars, such as the tensions between the global and local, the vocational and the enriching, the institutional and the personal, but agreed that all four Delors pillars are essential to all dimensions of life, economic as well as communal and individual;
• concluded that, while South Australia retains many of the advantages of a relatively small and cohesive community, the close association and collaboration among education sectors and between education and business and community which has been a traditional strength of the State has to some degree diminished, requiring greater efforts to enhance:
  • interconnectivity in the use and sharing of new technology,
  • collaboration among universities, between universities and TAFE, between secondary and postsecondary education, and between formal and non-formal education,
  • pathways for individuals to access education suited to their needs, with appropriate recognition of prior learning and transfer of academic credit;
• decided that a continuing mechanism &endash; a 'think tank' &endash; is needed in the State to explore the long-term implications of globalisation and the new technologies;
• resolved to extend the seminar as a continuing Task Force to promote the ideas which have been derived from the Delors Report as a basis for strategic thinking in education within South Australia.

Theme One:

The seminar discussed the wide range of interpretations, definitions and implications involved in globalisation, noting that:

• education for a global society involves cultural, civic and moral values as well as the skills needed for economic survival;
• education for globalisation must be provided equally for those engaged in internationally related activities and for all other members of society, none of whom can escape the consequences of globalisation;
• all sectors and all levels of education are equally involved, but there is a special challenge for schools to help students discover the 'treasure within' themselves;
• the nature of globalisation and its effects requires greater exploration.

The seminar resolved that:

• all education sectors need to introduce cross-curricular education for globalisation which encompasses all four pillars of the Delors Report, along the lines of the Becoming Global Citizens objective within the State Foundations for the Future Declaration;
• formal and non-formal education agencies should collaborate in developing long-term initiatives to:
  • review honestly the identity of our community in a global context,
  • develop collaborative systems which assist individuals to recognise and establish their place within family, community, nation and global environment,
  • recognise the lack of confidence of many people in the face of globalisation, thus requiring the development of forms of access to education which suit individual needs.

Themes Two and Four:

The seminar noted that:

• the economic future of South Australia is fraught with challenges;
• education in all its forms is the single greatest instrument available for State development;
• education is already an extremely significant factor in the State economy but that far more needs to be done to position Adelaide as an education city within an international context;
• the nature of work and expectations about work are changing rapidly and the focus must be on ways to generate wealth through intellectual activity and through work which involves the analysis and manipulation of information, concepts and symbols.

The seminar resolved that:

• State and education agencies should explore the potential for developing knowledge based work and the capacity of an educated population to generate work;
• the tensions inherent in the four pillars must be overcome, because learning to be and learning to live together are as integral to economic success as learning to know and learning to do;
• education agencies within the State must collaborate to a much greater extent, especially in the marketing of the State's education potential overseas, in developing new forms of economic activity within the State and in developing innovative educational opportunities such as mentoring. institutional twinning, off-shore experience for South Australian students and the bringing of work onto campuses;
• there needs to be more flexibility in assessing what counts as knowledge, in recognising prior learning and in providing pathways to further study and training for all occupational levels.

Theme Three:

The seminar noted that:

• technology gives focus to learning by individuals and community;
• an emphasis on human development and placing individuals at the centre of technology based learning will allow all four Delors pillars to be achieved through technology;
• an economic aim for the State should be to colonise the knowledge based economy and a social aim should be to develop IT infrastructure which promotes equity of access;
• South Australia showed an early commitment to technology in education, to flexible delivery of learning and to institutional cooperation but that there is now a lack of interconnectivity despite the earlier collaboration.

The seminar resolved that

• greater efforts should be made to share what is happening in technology within the State;
• a systematic effort should be made to develop State learning grids and to provide support and mentoring for individual learners;
• the State's educational institutions need to combine to surv hat,
• a focus on long-term initiatives.

Theme Five:

Seminar participants noted that:

• Adult Community Education (ACE) can contribute constructively to community development and in the longer term reduce dependence on community welfare provisions;
• ACE can give participants confidence to move into formal education in the TAFE and university sectors, opening up opportunities for job training and self-employment as well as personal development;
• ACE can enhance the quality of life of an ageing population, valuing its wisdom and life experience and encouraging older citizens to make a more active contribution to the community;
• ACE can pick up young people who slip through the net of more formal education provision and get them back to more effective learning and employment pathways.

The seminar resolved that:

• the TAFE and university sectors should recognise actively the significant role that ACE can play in postcompulsory education, especially in encouraging young people to move into more formal training provisions;
• action needs to be taken to make ACE opportunities more freely available in non-metropolitan areas of the State;
• ACE deserves significant investment by the State, with the aim of balancing the vocational emphasis of many areas of education with an emphasis on quality of life;
• formal education providers should recognise the learning and lifeskills achieved through ACE.

Theme Six:

Seminar participants noted:

• the need to develop strategies which maximised the impact of the State's tertiary education resources in an era of technological and global competition;
• there may be a need for radical change in institutional arrangements, including the dismantling of present tertiary education structures;
• strong arguments could be made both for strategies which led towards merged, mega-institutions, such as a single university-TAFE entity for the State, and equally for deconstruction of institutions with a view to emphasising local empowerment and human scale interconnectedness: the resolution of such tensions is a key challenge of the Delors Report.

The seminar resolved that:

• whatever strategy is adopted, the Delors challenge to develop the cultural, spiritual and social dimensions of individuals should be the basis for learning;
• there is need for a think-tank capacity within the State to explore the long-term implications of the globalisation of knowledge and technology for the delivery of postsecondary education in South Australia;
• the mandate of such a group would be to explore the tension between the local and the global to develop a balanced view of how the university and TAFE (and other VET and ACE providers) might develop a seamless approach to the provision of postsecondary and further education in South Australia.

Theme Seven:

Seminar participants noted that:

• modern society poses great challenges to the achievement of personal fulfilment and a considerable burden in redressing the balance falls to teachers at all levels;
• schools must lay the foundations for lifelong learning;
• teachers have a need for special expertise in literacy and numeracy, which underpin all lifelong learning, and in skills which encourage the balancing of the Delors four pillars;
• while the community held high expectations of the outcome of teachers' work, it had little understanding of the necessary resource base, especially in the provision of an adequate technological infrastructure;
• there is a great need for improved training in IT, more urgently as in-service for existing teachers than for new graduates.

The seminar resolved that:

• there should be increased monitoring of supply and demand issues in teaching, particularly in relation to mathematics and science teachers;
• at least minimal levels of IT knowledge should be required for teacher qualifications;
• there should be a comprehensive review of in-service professional development of teachers;
• while much professional development can and should occur in non-formal environments, every effort should be made to develop structured training translatable into credit in university qualifications.

Resolutions for Action

 The seminar resolved to continue development of the themes explored in the day's discussions by:

• continuing discussion of how the Delors pillars and principles might be utilised for developing a strategic vision for education in South Australia, reconvening as and when necessary;
• proposing a vision of education in the State in which education is seen:
  • as an investment, not a cost,
  • as possessing a spiritual as well as a practical dimension,
  • as relevant to the political and civic elements of the State, not only the economic;
• exploring opportunities related to the spread of information technology;
• exerting an influence on opportunities which arise to map the State's future, such as:
  • the Review of the Education Act and Children's Services Act,
  • the State Regional Task Force,
  • Business Vision 2010,
  • Sustainable Development Initiative,
  • Local Management of Schools,
  • Education Adelaide.
• creating the basis of a "Delors Commission" for the State &endash; perhaps for the Asian Region.

In closing, the seminar appointed a small Working Group to carry forward the resolutions and to arrange for further meetings of seminar participants as a continuing Delors Task Force.

General Conclusions And Recommendations

1. Globalisation, Identity, Citizenship and Values

2. Education and the Economic Future of South Australia

3. The New Technologies

4. Education and the World of Work

5. Adult Lifelong Learning

6. Universities and Research

7. Teachers and Teacher Education

Resolutions for Action