PSA Programme Section for National Policies and Action Plans

UNESCO gives a particular attention to providing support for the development of national educational policies and action plans in Member States, especially focusing on countries undergoing socio-economic restructuring or that are in the course of reconstruction in post-conflict situations.

This mission of upstream services is undertaken by the Section for National Policies and Action Plans (ED/ERD/PSA), a UNESCO unit within the Division for Reconstruction and Development of Education Systems. Work has been concentrated on the Least Developed Countries in the Sub-Saharan African region and in South-East Asia and is being extended to countries in the Eastern European, Central Asian and Arab sub-regions.

UNESCO works with governments to fulfil three interlinked major objectives:

	develop sustainable education sector reforms or reconstruction programmes;
	strengthen national capacity to prepare and implement sector policies and programmes essentially through on the job training and a participatory approach;
	facilitate policy dialogue between international agencies and national partners and inter-agency co-ordination so that funding sources can be mobilized in a co-ordinated and concerted manner.

Most upstream support projects and activities are financed by extrabudgetary funding sources, including UNDP. As part of the Organization's decentralization process, upstream activities, which are of a highly technical nature, are being increasingly decentralized to UNESCO's Field Offices or undertaken as joint Headquarters/Field operations. This decentralization process will be accelerated in the future, with Headquarters playing a supporting role, with a view to reinforcing and diversifying the Organization's capacity to respond to requests from Member States for advisory services and the exchange of the conceptual and technical information .

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