Commonwealth of Learning - Institutional Support 2019-2021

This grant represents Canada's long term institutional support to the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). The COL uses these funds along with other donor funding to achieve its mandate. The COL’s mandate is to help governments institutions and organizations expand the scale efficiency and quality of learning by using appropriate open distance and technology-enabled learning. Project activities aim to strengthen member countries’ capacities to develop the human resources required for their economic and social development. The work of the COL is guided by its 2015-2021 Strategic Plan. Through this plan the COL focuses its programming on two sectors education and skills with gender equality as a cross-cutting theme. In the education sector the COL supports countries institutions and organizations in their development of formal education mechanisms including open schooling higher education the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth and teacher education. In the skills sector the COL supports institutions and organizations in developing formal and non-formal learning opportunities that focus on healthy communities technical and vocational skills development and technology enabled learning.

The expected outcomes as stated by the COL include: (1) more gender-responsive curricula and learning resources in place which are relevant to sustainable development; (2) more institutions and organizations take up implement and scale-up tested open and distance-learning models; (3) more governments organizations and institutions implement or significantly improve open and distance-learning systems and practices for quality learning opportunities; and (4) more governments organizations and institutions adopt open and distance-learning policies and create strategies for quality learning opportunities.