Global Education Leaders’ Partnership

Global Education Leaders’ Partnership (sometimes referred to as Global Education Leaders Program), or GELP is a group of education reformers operating in and across countries, with a particular focus on pushing the digitisation of learning.

GELP was initiated, funded and managed by the technology giant Cisco until 2011 and since then has been run by the UK-based Innovation Unit.

It says is ‘dedicated to reimagining the future of education at a global scale’.

A Cisco project

GELP began life as a series of ‘white papers’ for technology multinational Cisco.

According to Cisco, it 'launched the Global Education Leaders Program (GELP) in September 2009 to challenge and support education leaders ready to implement the vision outlined in the white paper Equipping Every Learner for the 21st Century.

The publication, published the previous year, was described by Cisco as 'only one contribution to the flood of new thinking that is coursing through education systems in every part of the world.' Following this, Cisco brought together 'opinion leaders, educators, and politicians from developed and developing nations' to discuss its education reform ideas. 'Our aim is collectively to refine a vision for 21st century learning, and to gather the best and most powerful insights into how that vision can be realized,' it said in 2008. Cisco's thinking was subsequently published at: www.transformglobaleducation.org (no longer live; accessible via Wayback).

According to Cisco, the core ideas of Equipping Every Learner for the 21st Century were initiated by the company's internal education strategists, but it also worked with, among others, Michael Barber and Tony Mackay. It also consulted with CoSN (the Consortium for School Networking), P21 (Partnership for 21st Learning), and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) in the US.

In July 2011, Cisco transitioned ownership and management of GELP to the the Innovation Unit.

‘Transforming’ education

GELP describes itself as a ‘community of key education system leaders, policy-makers, thought-leaders and world-class consultants collaborating to transform education at local, national and international levels. The aim of these transformations is to equip every learner with the skills, expertise and knowledge to survive and thrive in the 21st century.’

GELP has worked with policy makers in a number of jurisdictions

• Australia
• Brazil
• British Columbia, Canada
• Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
• England
• Finland
• India
• New York City, USA
• New Zealand
• Ontario, Canada
• South Korea
• USA Innovation Lab Network CCSSO
• Victoria, Australia

Redesigning Education: the book

In 2013 GELP published Redesigning Education, which provides GELP’s blueprint for reforming education systems (summarised above).

Redesigning Education was launched at Royal Society of Arts

Funding

GELP says it is, or has been, supported by the following companies and foundations: *Innovation Unit

• Ellen Koshland Family Fund
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Cisco
• Promethean

GELP also says it ‘draws on specialist contributions from a wide range of partners, including to date [2013]:

• Hay Group
• Harvard Graduate School of Education
• McKinsey & Company
• Bridge
• Asia Education Foundation

People

GELP refers to its people as a 'faculty'.

• David Albury
• Valerie Hannon: Co-Founder of the Innovation Unit UK and founding member and Co-Chair of GELP; senior consultant to the OECD Innovative Learning Environments program; regular contributor to the World Summit on Innovation in Education (WISE).
• Anthony Mackay
• David Istance
• Kathe Kirby
• Albert Bertani
• Keren Caple
• Lynn van der Elst

Steering group

• Lynn Olson, advisor on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation US ‘college ready’ programme.