It will consider the new roles of education and the new demands made on education systems in a world of accelerating economic, environmental and social change and tension. Initially, the Commission will need to identify a series of key questions which it will examine during its work, the answers to which will be the major recommendations it will put forward. These questions will include perennial issues facing governments, societies, and educators, and which will continue to be important during the coming years. There will also be questions raised by new configurations of society, new developments in the physical and social world. The latter will imply new priorities, new study, new action.
Questions concerning education and education systems fall, broadly, into two main categories.
The first category includes those questions relating to the purposes, goals, and functions of education, including the aims of individuals and each person's need and desire for self-fulfillment. The second covers the specifically educational issues concerning providers of education, including the models, structures, contents and functioning of education systems. The Commission will carry out a broadly-based analysis both of what is known about the current situation, and of forecasts and trends in national policies and reforms in education in the different regions of the world over the last twenty years. It will highlight the ways in which education can play a more dynamic and constructive role in preparing individuals and societies for the twenty-first century. In its deliberations and work, the Commission will attempt to keep in mind some underlying principles which are universal and common to the aims of educators, citizens, policy-makers, and other partners and participants in the process of education.