Lifelong education, literacy and adult education are dealt with by the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Hamburg.

Two regional centres also operate in the field of post-secondary education:

CRESALC for Latin America and the Caribbean,

CEPES for Europe.

The IBE prepares and organizes the International Conference on Education (ICE), which is convened every two years in Geneva by the Director-General of UNESCO. Each session of the Conference deals with a specific theme and leads to the adoption of an international recommendation on that theme addressed to Ministers of Education worldwide. The forty-fourth session of the Conference will be held in 1994 on "Appraisal and perspectives of education for international understanding".

The Bureau houses a documentation centre, which contains more than 100,000 books, documents and periodicals, and microfiches. Among the documents available, there is a large collection of national reports on educational developments and innovations, and replies by Member States to the IBE questionnaires on the ICE themes. IBE's databases can be consulted on request. The IBE collaborates with more than 100 national documentation centres through its International Network for Educational Information (INED).

For those working in the field of educational research, information and documentation, the IBE organizes training activities in the form of a scholars-in-residence programme, workshops and brief courses on the techniques of librarianship.

The IBE publishes educational studies and reference works, such as the International Yearbook of Education and the UNESCO: IBE Education Thesaurus, as well as newsletters and periodicals. As of 1994, UNESCO's quarterly Prospects will become the IBE's main international review of comparative education.

Decisions on programme activities and the budget are made by the UIE Governing Board and the UNESCO General Conference. The Institute's financial resources are provided by UNESCO, the German Government, the authorities of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, and other funding sources.

Currently, the Institute's main tasks include:

collecting and analysing information on research in the field of adult education. Particular attention is given to educational opportunities for migrants, minorities and other underprivileged communities, to women and literacy;

conducting co-operative research projects related to non-formal basic education for adults and out-of-school youth, including projects on the development of alternative learning approaches for out-of-school youth, the improvement of evaluation practices, the use of mother tongues and national languages in literacy and post-literacy in industrialized countries;

strengthening information exchanges and the extension of networks in the field of adult and continuing education. Through its Exchange Network on Literacy and Post-Literacy in Industrialized and Developing Countries, UIE stimulates co-operation between educational researchers and practitioners around the world.

The Institute houses a documentation centre and a library specializing in literacy and continuing education, containing over 50,000 publications and documents.

UIE Publications include the International Review of Education, handbooks and reference books, studies on Literacy in Industrialized Countries, reports and a newsletter.

The 1,000 mark was passed in the number of trainees participating in the annual nine-month course, while over 2,300 persons have participated in the intensive courses and workshops which IIEP organizes in a number of countries and subregions.

IIEP's research and study programme are relevant to the Organization's main priorities on basic education for all and human resources development, and lead to the production of training materials and modules. For the period 1990-1995 this covers such topics as improvement of the quality of education, access for disadvantaged groups and ways to reduce inequalities, management of the transition from school to work, planning science education for secon-dary schools, new trends in technical and vocational education, institutional management of higher education as well as financing, management and administration of education.

IIEP disseminates new technical concepts in educational planning through a large-scale programme of publications and documentation. The Institute has published some 700 titles, including research reports, case studies, training materials, reference books and the Fundamentals of Educational Planning series, all of which are available in English and/or French, increasingly also in Spanish.

The Documentation Centre has some 37,000 books and documents as well as around 550 periodicals dealing with educational planning and related subjects.