The UNESCO International Institute for STEM Education was formally inaugurated in Shanghai on Sunday, marking the first institution of a UNESCO Category 1 Center in China.
In November 2023, the forty second session of the UNESCO General Conference unanimously adopted a decision to determine the International Institute for STEM Education in Shanghai. It is the tenth Category 1 Center globally and the first exterior Europe and North America.
The institute”s principal features embody selling schooling in science, know-how, engineering, and arithmetic throughout all phases from early childhood to maturity, with a give attention to offering inclusive, equitable, related and high-quality STEM schooling for all.
Huai Jinpeng, minister of schooling, expressed heat congratulations on the official institution of the institute.
He famous that the institute is the first Category 1 Center collectively established by China and UNESCO. Its institution represents a serious historic milestone in China-UNESCO cooperation and is the results of joint efforts between China and UNESCO member states.
It additionally stands as important testimony to Sino-UNESCO collaboration in selling open science, open schooling, and cultural exchanges, he stated.
China stays dedicated to fulfilling its guarantees to the worldwide group, working with international locations around the globe to foster innovation and help the institute not solely as a supply of superior STEM schooling ideas and a testing floor for instructional concepts, but additionally as a global platform for selling instructional transformation, technological innovation, and repair to sustainable improvement, making substantive contributions to world sustainable improvement and the constructing of a shared future for humanity, he stated.
Gong Zheng, mayor of Shanghai, stated the town will take the institution of the institute as a possibility to strengthen the cultivation of sci-tech innovation expertise, improve public scientific literacy, advance high-level opening-up in schooling, and speed up efforts to construct Shanghai right into a highland for worldwide STEM schooling improvement.
These efforts will assist promote a virtuous cycle amongst schooling, science and know-how, and expertise improvement, offering sturdy help for enhancing the town’s core competitiveness, he stated.
Shanghai will totally help the event of the institute and contribute actively to world instructional reform and innovation and the belief of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, he added.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay stated she was honored to witness this historic second in Shanghai.
She famous that Shanghai, with its focus of data, scientific innovation and historic heritage, gives a first-class venue for the institute and expressed deep gratitude for the help from all events.
Azoulay emphasised that cooperation between China and UNESCO has a protracted historical past, and the institution of a Category 1 Center in Shanghai carries a grand imaginative and prescient and extraordinary significance. The institute will be part of UNESCO’s world community of Category 1 Centers, promote the event of STEM sciences, advance world instructional fairness, and assist international locations around the globe tackle shared challenges.
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