MELBOURNE, August 2, 2018 – The first major education event at Asia Society Melbourne will be the 2019 Global Cities Education Network symposium. Organized in partnership with the Victoria State Department of Education and Training, the symposium will be held March 12–15, 2019, in Melbourne.

Asia Society recently announced its expansion to Melbourne, significantly growing its presence in Australia and serving as the Australian hub for the Center for Global Education at Asia Society.

The Global Cities Education Network (GCEN), an initiative of the Center for Global Education, is an international learning community of city school systems in Asia and North America made up of teams of high-ranking school system and city officials. Participating cities include Denver, Hangzhou, Hiroshima, Hong Kong, Houston, Lexington, Melbourne, Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore, and Toronto. Together, the network works to build strong school systems by supporting education leaders in understanding effective policy and practice and considering practical applications.

"Asia Society recognizes Melbourne's leadership in global education and the network looks forward to learning from Melbourne’s success in implementing systems-level change to improve outcomes for all students. Over the course of their membership in GCEN, Victoria educators have improved instructional and leadership practices and leveraged their international learning to spread effective implementation from one school to many throughout the district," says Anthony Jackson, Director of the Center for Global Education.

"This is an important step for Asia Society Australia, as we collaborate to showcase and learn from Melbourne and Victoria's educational ties to Asia. We look forward to working with a strong network of educational leaders," says Philipp Ivanov, CEO of Asia Society Australia.

GCEN participants will visit Melbourne to discuss and explore a number of areas of practice including a culture of equity, spreading high-quality instructional practice, growing career and technical education options, and global competence education. In addition to the symposium, a public forum will be offered, with details to come closer to the date.

The Melbourne gathering will be GCEN's eighth symposium. Previous symposia have been held in Denver, London, Shanghai, Toronto, Singapore, Seattle, and Hong Kong. For more information about the symposium or the forum, please contact Heather Singmaster: [email protected].