Our first ever Alumni Institute

Individual CEMETS alumni from all over the world joined this year’s CEMETS Alumni Institute to deepen their understanding of education systems reform. Having gained foundational knowledge and experience by attending the Summer Institute before, reform leaders from Nepal, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Washington DC, Uzbekistan, South Africa, Paraguay, Uruguay, California, Colorado, Indiana and Benin joined together for a week of advanced site visits, lectures, group work and showcase presentations.

A key aspect of the Alumni Institute was sharing knowledge among reform leaders. Our group work sessions played a special role in this: after learning from lectures and showcases, participants teamed up and worked together on various reform strategies. This not only sparked international exchange, but also helped reform leaders to think outside the box, provide each other with feedback and learn how to collaborate on changing education systems for the better.

Participants learned more about the Swiss education system during lectures as well as site visits to external pageCYPcall_made and external pageBaselland Economic Chambercall_made. These provided a special focus on vocational education and training as key feature of a permeable education system and were complemented by advanced showcase speakers from Colorado, Nepal and Serbia. Noel Ginsburg provided in-depth knowledge about implementing an apprenticeship model from scratch as the Founder and CEO of external pageCareerwisecall_made, while Hari Prasad Lamsal and Usha Bhandari illustrated how they contributed to re-engineering Nepal’s education system. Offering insight specifically from the view of Serbia’s Ministry of Education and Chamber of Commerce, Gabrijela Grujić and Mrijana Kovačević demonstrated their experiences with reforming an education system from a top-down level.

Learning about education systems reform is just the start. To truly make a difference, an international community of education system experts is needed. The CEMETS Alumni Institute 2023 helped reform leaders get together and start collaborating internationally through scientific knowledge transfer and international exchange. We look forward to finding out what this community will bring.