Lifelong Learning in Transformation: Promising Practices in Southeast Asia

This report is an outcome of a project on building a lifelong learning agenda in Southeast Asian countries, which aims to address the region’s remaining educational challenges in ensuring ‘inclusive and equitable quality education and promot[ing] lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). By sharing promising policies and practices in implementing integrated lifelong learning from different perspectives, countries can learn from one another and move their visions for lifelong learning fully into practice.

The publication documents a variety of promising practices from 11 countries, focusing particularly on the features critical to the promotion of lifelong learning for all; namely, inclusive and gender-responsive teaching and learning practices, recognition of learning outcomes from non-formal and informal learning, collaboration between social and economic development sectors and coherent national government policies and strategies. The report comprises three main sections: a reflection on lifelong learning in international and national documents, a collection of good practice drawn from their national reports, and a set of recommendations for policies and programmes promoting lifelong learning. It is hoped that these recommendations will stimulate discussion and new developments, in both policy and practice, in the region.