World Quality Day – UNESCO

Introduction

In 1990, the World Quality Day was approved to raise awareness of the significance of quality for all institutions in different fields to promote growth, innovation and sustainability at the global level. Since then, institutions around the world celebrate this day, the second Thursday of November every year, due to the contribution of quality to institutional growth, prosperity and well-being at the national and global levels.

It was celebrated for the first time in London, UK in 2008. The theme of the celebration is decided every year by the Chartered Quality Institute (C.Q.I.). The pervious themes included: “Sustainability: improving our products, people and planet” and “Creating customer value”, among others with the aim of raising Quality awareness and supporting individuals and organizations to achieve economic prosperity.

Our contemporary world has gone through a series of successive transformations, which have introduced new concepts, dimensions and domains to quality. The total quality has become one of the most important strategic approaches that has received widespread attention, for being an effective approach to enhance institution effectiveness, attract and maintain customers, ensure continuous improvement of product and service quality, and enhance and expand institution impact on the different local, regional and internationals levels. Moreover, moving towards superior and deeper concepts has been taken place to achieve institutional and organizational excellence. Consequently, many global models have emerged, such as the European model, the American model, the Australian model, and many national relevant practices, as each country now has a quality and excellence model for its institutions. The competitive excellence may be one of the most important concepts that received attention in the increasingly competitive market. Various institutions in different sectors, including education, endeavor to gain renewed and sustainable competitive advantages, with the aim of continuous development to achieve leadership or even just for survival. Thus, the concept of competitive advantages has become one of the important concepts and represents the area in which the institution has a higher ability than its competitors to seize external opportunities or reduce the impact of threats. Such advantage stems from the ability of the institution to use its material and intangible resources, whether related to the quality of manpower, technology, operations, cost reduction, efficiency improvement, or otherwise. In light of the global transformations reinforced by the Covid-19 crisis and its consequences or even benefits on education, the Education Transformation Summit was held in New York, and addressed issues of equality, inclusion, quality and relevance, and their decisive impact on the future of children and youth around the world. The Summit succeeded in raising education to the top of the global political agenda, and mobilizing action, ambition, solidarity and solutions to recover pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds to transform education in a rapidly changing world, taking into account the unprecedented challenges along with opportunities for prosperity and peace for all. In this context. Global sustainable development and the promotion of competitiveness is the right act of quality conscience in all areas of our lives.

Our common future can be shaped through sustainable development with a global competitive advantage that requires every human being to acquire the necessary competencies to play his/her part in the search for innovative solutions to protect humans, the land, and the planet from all risks. This is the conscience of self-responsibility and cooperation, which is ultimately a shared global responsibility. Therefore, striving to ensure quality education for global sustainable development is a priority for education systems at the national, regional and global levels.

The common aspirations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and beyond require the right initiatives and actions from the first time and every time during the progress towards such achievement. It is necessary to rethink our common global future by ensuring the quality of education in the twenty-first century, and ensuring that educational policies, curricula and practices in all education systems have fulfilled the requirements of shaping a sustainable future.

Moving forward steadily for a better world and future requires an ambitious insight for the future of education in light of the unprecedent scientific and technological progress. Therefore, RCQE has taken several proactive steps, perhaps the most important of which is to work on developing an Arab Model for Quality and Excellence in Education, and to conduct a survey study on awards in the Arab region as a preparation for launching RCQE Award for Excellence in Education. Accordingly, RCQE, in cooperation with national, regional and international organizations, will organize the Global Forum on the occasion of World Quality Day (10 November 2022) “Education Quality in the 21st Century: Excellence for Global Sustainable Development”.

The Theme of World Quality Day this year is “Quality Conscience: Doing the Right Thing” to contribute to the development of organization management by building a deep culture of quality in its comprehensive sense. It is a comprehensive method for the development, organization and promotion of lifelong learning and innovation concepts. Quality is also one of the main pillars of the new management model that contributes to enabling the work systems of educational institutions and other organizations, to respond to developments, and changes and to face and adapt with challenges in innovative ways.

Objective

Enhance the role of education quality in supporting the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and beyond.
Expand and deepen the dialogue and thinking among thinkers, educational decision-makers and educators on the importance of education quality in promoting the achieved progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and beyond.
Cooperation and integration with regional and international organizations related to education quality and excellence.
Highlight the distinguished practices in education quality and excellence in the Arab countries.
Provide recommendations at the regional and international levels to support the direction towards quality learning and competitiveness enhancement.

Topics

The culture of quality in a changing world.
Quality and its relationship to the competitive advantage.
Education quality and innovative solutions to support sustainable development.
Distinguished practices in education quality and excellence.

Participants

The forum will be attended virtually (via ZOOM) by ministries of education in the Arab countries, regional and international organizations, and national committees.
Participation is open for educational decision makers, experts, researchers, academics, specialists in education quality and excellence, representatives of ministries of education, organizations, schools, and universities at the national, regional and international level.

Forum strategy

The forum will be held virtually for one day in the from of dialogue sessions. Participants will have the opportunity to communicate and share best practices.