ABSTRACT
Open and distance education is becoming an increasingly significant policy choice for developing countries if policy papers from international organisations such as UNESCO and the World Bank are to be taken seriously. Open and distance learning holds out the promise of increasing accessibility to education and training and enabling the best use of limited educational resources. Similarly, it is playing a growing role in the OECD countries with, as has been seen in Chapters 2, 9 and 10, increasing activities by the private sector. But a clear policy for open and distance learning is often lacking. Recent publications from UNESCO and the World Bank, for example, are informative on global trends in open and distance learning but silent on policy and strategy (Murphy et al. 2002, UNESCO 2002a). Like many other declarations and conference reports before them, they tend to provide a general argument for open and distance learning, rather than an articulation of specific strategies for implementing its methodologies, the theme of this book.
