GYEONGJU ― Education ministers from Asia-Pacific agreed on Wednesday to enhance “practical and sustainable” cooperation through Korea’s Educational Cooperation Project.

Set up by the Seoul government, the ECP, or Gyeongju Initiative, will carry out collaborative research and host conferences on educational cooperation in the APEC region.

As part of the new project, the ECP will launch an education portal on the APEC Knowledge Bank site and share research findings, materials and resources.

“Korea’s Education Cooperation Project will be a stepping stone for strengthening educational cooperation among APEC member economies,” Education, Science and Technology Minister Lee Ju-ho said at the close of the APEC Education Ministerial Meeting in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province.

The headline theme for the fifth meeting was “Future Challenges and Educational Responses: Fostering Global, Innovative and Cooperative Education.”

“We had meaningful and fruitful discussion and reached concrete agreements on 22 articles of the joint statement,” Lee told reporters.

In their final Gyeongju Communique, the group of 21 economies endorsed calls to broaden education cooperation.

Lee also stressed that all the ministers recognized that communication is essential for fostering global competency.

The ministers agreed to help support foreign language education and nurture high quality language teachers. They also agreed to continue to upgrade mathematics and science education as well as technical and vocational training programs across APEC member economies.

Also the participants promised to share their experiences of information and communication technology use in education. In particular, they said they would strengthen the use of ICT in teaching and create an open-education resource website.

APEC Secretariat Executive Director, Ambassador Muhamad Noor said the significance of the joint statement was the “entire set of 21 members forging ahead at the same time on a particular initiative”

“Given our track record of promoting cooperation, I’m confident that members will work ever more closely together to achieve our goals,” he told The Korea Herald.

Sergei Ivanets, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Russia said he believed the meeting’s outcome was “a step forward to a more open and more collaborative education environment.”

“The result and the success we’ve achieved here will be addressed at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok in September,” he added.

The APEC Education Ministerial Meeting was first launched in 1992, and has convened every four years since 2000.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)