Vision

The initial vision of the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory (ARC) is to establish a global group of educational systems that advances values of equity, excellence, wellbeing, inclusion, sustainability, democracy and human rights for all students within high-quality, professionally-run systems. Core skills in literacy, numeracy and problem solving will always be vital. In a world of economic transformations, growing inequalities and rapid change, it is also important to broaden and deepen our approach to how we interpret and improve high quality educational systems for all our students.

The ARC Education project works in a way that complements the international initiatives of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development  (OECD) and the United Nations (UN). It also exercises its ability to advance a more expansive vision of educational excellence that embraces issues such as special education inclusion, many kinds of diversity, and wellness supports within systems that build and promote a strong and sustainable teaching profession.

ARC builds on current strengths and strategies of your own and other educational systems with the intention of improving them over time through deliberately designed processes. It seeks out and spreads current best practices, and develops next practices that reflect ARC values, alongside existing OECD and UN initiatives. Through its annual summit, virtual Thoughtmeet series, as well as local and international activities, ARC will also develop collective responsibility for shared success and global impact.

ARC energizes member systems with agendas determined by themselves; stimulates discourse by providing high level contact with world thought leaders; widens and deepens the global narrative of educational change; and leads to clear, collectively determined outcomes, such as:

• A common declaration initiating a new global direction for education
• Development of broad indicators in line with ARC values
• Peer-review and critical friendships among the participating systems
• Thematic reviews on urgent topics decided by the participants, e.g. response to COVID-19, system leadership, boys’ achievement, mathematics performance, education of refugees.