As his term as Chair of the UIL Governing Board comes to a close, Daniel Baril reflects on the strategic priorities, achievements and enduring challenges that have shaped his tenure.

© UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning

Last 1 January marked the end of my term as Chair of the Governing Board of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL). It was an honour to chair an institute that holds a unique place within the UNESCO system.

Since its founding in 1952, UIL has provided recognized intellectual leadership to UNESCO Member States and to the international adult education community. It helps shape both reflection and action on lifelong learning, while carrying a vital responsibility: defending and advancing the right to adult education. Serving as Chair of its Governing Board, therefore, comes with both an opportunity – and a duty – to keep this mandate alive in today’s context.

My term, which began in January 2020, unfolded amid a period of rapid transformation in the education landscape. Throughout it, I sought – within my means – to promote two perspectives that I considered strategic.

The first concerns the profound evolution of lifelong learning realities. Ways of learning are diversifying under the combined influence of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. At the same time, learning design now offers a broad spectrum of modalities – face-to-face, online, hybrid and blended – and an expanding range of formats, from microlearning to full-length programmes. Practices are also evolving: self-directed learning, peer learning, learning communities, recognition of prior learning, and more. In this context, I considered it essential that UIL embrace these developments as broadly as possible to remain closely aligned with lived realities and with the futures of adult learning.

The second perspective lies at the heart of UIL’s historic mission: the defence of the right to education. A striking paradox defines our era. On the one hand, we now have an unprecedented array of educational resources, pedagogical approaches and technological capacities that could, in principle, meet everyone’s learning needs. On the other hand, dramatic inequalities persist – whether in access, quality, continuity of learning pathways or recognition of learning. I therefore made it a point, whenever the opportunity arose, to reaffirm a simple requirement: educational resources should serve to strengthen the effective conditions for exercising the right to education – not the other way around.

Certain milestones stood out as defining moments of this term. The Seventh International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VII), held in 2022, was one of them. Through my participation in the conference’s organizing committee and my role as Chair of the drafting committee for its final declaration, I was able to support a broad vision of adult learning and education – one that expands the educational capacity that people can mobilize to make the right to adult education real. In this same spirit, the emphasis placed on financing in the Marrakech Framework for Action, as well as the open approach to expanding the domains of learning, clearly reflect these concerns.

At the end of these years, I take one thing above all: serving as Chair and spokesperson for UIL’s leadership in promoting an ambitious understanding of lifelong learning – rooted in the implementation of the right to education – was an honour.

But chairing UIL also means grasping how fragile the resources are that sustain such an essential mission. A competent and committed team cannot support Member States in implementing lifelong learning policies without adequate financial means. I leave this term with a clear sense of a persistent tension: that of a fundamental mission, carried forward with conviction, confronted with limited resources that too often impose difficult trade-offs.