Besides target setting, the Dakar Framework for Action also recognized the need to help many nations develop their own action plans to achieve the targets and mobilize resources from all available sources within and outside of national jurisdictions. A further call reiterated the role of civil society in education and the importance of having providers of education commit to defining, designing, maintaining, and sustaining quality in its delivery. All these are tall orders, considering that when the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien was convened:

• There were more than 960 million adults who were illiterate and two-thirds of them were women and girls;
• More than 100 million children, mostly girls, did not have access to primary schooling;
• More than 100 million children and countless millions of adults were failing to complete their basic education programs, while millions more satisfied school attendance requirements but did not acquire essential knowledge and skills; and
• More than a third of the world"s adult population (some two billion individuals) had no access to printed knowledge, new skills and technologies that could improve the quality of their lives and help them to shape social and cultural development.

The region"s share in this challenge is considerable. There have been significant achievements in the education sectors in many of the countries in the Asia Pacific. In the close to two decades since Jomtien, participation in primary education has increased; there are more girl children in school; and retention rates are improving, as well as gender equality in the teaching profession and access to post-primary, post-secondary, and professional education. But these achievements still fall short of global ambitions. While the task of getting a larger proportion of our children and young people into schools, colleges, and universities is by itself a daunting one, what is even more challenging is providing learning opportunities for the many millions of adults in the region. Eradicating illiteracy, improving skills, enhancing knowledge bases, creating windows for learning, and ensuring continuous learning are all fundamental to fulfilling the MDGs. And these must be made possible not only for the fortunate few who live in urban communities and who have access to the communications infrastructure and classrooms. The following must also be given education opportunities to enable them to participate in the creation of the knowledge society:

• Those who are functionally illiterate: Apart from about 900 million illiterates globally, there are almost half as many adults who cannot cope with the demands of daily life on the basis of their prior literacy levels.
• The physically challenged: Annually, in Asia alone, about 15 million people become disabled as a result of war, diseases, accidents, and malnutrition. Their major hope of self-improvement is to pick up skills for self-improvement.
• The long-term unemployed: Long-term unemployment is a debilitating pathology; training people in such situations pose special challenges to delivery and pedagogy.
• Out of school youth, especially boys: This group is highly vulnerable to socially disruptive behaviours. A combination of apprenticeship, employment and self-education is needed to help them to contribute to a productive economy.
• Women and girls: In many parts of Asia and the Pacific, women and girls still find themselves marginalized from participating in education and training. Ways have to be found to circumvent the social, cultural, and economic impediments to their education.
• Refugees, recent immigrants and non-nationals: Today, roughly 125 million people live outside their countries of origin. This flow of people for political, social, or economic reasons is not expected to slow down. They and their families need educational programs that will develop their language, social, and job skills.

Governments are also beginning to recognize that planning for "competitive advantage" will require a labour force that has literacy and numeracy skills beyond three to six years of primary schooling (which is the current situation in most industrialized and newly industrializing countries, and worse in developing countries). Globally, some two billion people in today"s workforce will continue to be there well into the first quarter of the next century. They will need retooling and continuous skills upgrading.

The huge demand for initial, continuing and lifelong education has placed education systems "at a crisis point" (Daniel 1996). The need to expand access, ensure quality, and respond to a diversity of learning needs at a time of diminishing resources presents difficult choices for governments. In confronting these choices, nations, and institutions in the Asia Pacific need to reexamine traditions of schooling, teaching, and learning. And they need to carefully consider the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to meet the demands for universal quality education at all levels.

Even before the arrival of the new ICTs, education institutions such as the Correspondence School of New Zealand, National Open School of India, Open Universities of Sri Lanka and Hong Kong, Alama Iqbal Open University of Pakistan, and Indira Gandhi National Open University of India were providing mass, flexible, and affordable education to remote learners using the older analogue technologies of print, audio and video, and the broadcast vehicles of radio and television. The experiences and successes of these institutions are a testimony to the effectiveness of technologies in taking learning to individuals and large communities simultaneously.