Cities from North America and Asia-Pacific Convene in Toronto around Educating Students in a Global Context

TORONTO, October 7, 2014 — The fourth convening of Asia Society’s Global Cities Education Network will take place October 7–10, 2014 in Toronto, Canada.

The 2014 symposium will focus on the issues of creating effective school leaders as well as the challenges of creating professional learning systems, and developing 21st-century Vocational Education and Training (VET)/Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs.

On October 9, from 5:30–7:00 pm, a public forum will be held in conjunction with the Symposium. The forum will be moderated by Tony Mackay of the Center for Strategic Education, and feature panelists include Aine Maher (Independent Schools Victoria, Melbourne), Liew Wei Li (Singapore Ministry of Education), Kai-ming Cheng (University of Hong Kong), and Tom Shelton (Fayette County Public Schools, Kentucky). The forum will be opened by Tony Jackson of Asia Society and Donna Quan of the Toronto District School Board. Internationally renowned education reform expert and author Michael Fullan will also be speaking and participating in the forum.

Launched in May 2012, the Global Cities Education Network is an international learning community of city school systems in the Asia-Pacific region and North America. Members of the Network identify common, high-priority problems of policy and practice and pool their knowledge with international research on “best practices” to craft effective, practical solutions that can be adapted to varying cultural and political contexts.

Participants at the convening will include teams of high-ranking officials and key stakeholders from the Network cities (Hong Kong, Melbourne, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore in the Asia-Pacific region and Denver, Houston, Lexington, Seattle, and Toronto in North America) and a select group of international experts.