Commonwealth Day 2026

I'm Peter Scott, president and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, Cole. On this Commonwealth Day, we mark this year's theme, unlocking opportunities together for a prosperous Commonwealth. This is a theme that speaks not only to our shared purpose for the Commonwealth, but the unlocking power of learning. Across our 56 Commonwealth member countries, too many people are still locked into the structural barriers that prevent access to quality education. Learning inequity, gender inequality, and unequal access to technology continue to limit upward mobility and restrict opportunity. For millions, talent is universal, but access to the opportunity to grow and use it is not. That's where we must move beyond the conventional to more open systems. Open learning is how we unlock opportunity at scale. It removes the traditional barriers of distance, cost, and circumstance. It extends high quality education and skills training to the most remote communities all across our Commonwealth. And it can create flexible pathways for young people, women, working adults, and those too often left behind. Through a direct collaboration with Commonwealth ministries, educational institutions, and other partners, Carl expands access to highquality open, distance, and technology enabled education. Together with this alliance of partners, we're opening new opportunities to education, to skills, and to lifelong learning. 2026 represents a critical moment in a world showing clear fractures with so much negative zero thinking. From climate emergencies to public health crisis, from economic uncertainty to geographical and geopolitical instability, we're living through a great period of uncertainty. But in a time of global fragmentation, the Commonwealth is a beacon of multilateral cooperation. For learning, we offer a plus sum equation in which one Commonwealth nation's innovation benefits all. That's the strength of our family of nations, the common enthusiasm to openly share ideas, models, research, and innovation all across our borders as our greatest asset. With more than 60% of our population under the age of 30, young people at the heart of shaping our future, but navigating unprecedented challenges. Women and girls remain the largest group of the disadvantaged and excluded. But now across many Commonwealth countries, we're seeing rising school dropout rates and increasing disengagement amongst boys and young men, particularly at the secondary and post-secary levels. In an innovative educational landscape, open and blended learning models that target skills training can help young people, especially disengaged men and boys, to connect to real job opportunities. And that's not just about getting boys off the street and into learning. It's about making sure they have the tools, confidence, and the opportunity to reach their potential and to play an active role in their communities and to contribute to their local economies. And as technology changes with new things like artificial intelligence transforming lives and work, we need to ensure these advances close the digital gap rather than widen it. We know that technology by itself isn't enough. Educational innovation must be ethical, inclusive, and build resilient nations. Just last month at the India AI impact summit, we invited Commonwealth leaders to support Cole's frugal AI approach through the Gabberon to New Delhi Compact. For this work, Cole is building a network of partners who are dedicated to advancing AI and education in ways that are trusted, inclusive, and responsibly managed. Looking away from the lockedin thinking of large, hungry corporate cloud services to unlock local, more ondevice, more data sovereign AIs. A frugal approach deploys AI systems that prioritize sovereignty of member data, accessibility, and cost efficiency. All things that are critical to members such as our small island developing states. For Cole, education innovation is not an economic catalyst only. It is a social imperative. It transforms lives. And when scaled across 2.7 billion people, it transforms the world. So on this Commonwealth Day, let us reaffirm our commitment to unlocking opportunities together to release the full potential of the Commonwealth and create a positive future with economic prosperity and also national resilience and the inclusive strength of all of our peoples. From the Commonwealth of Learning, happy Commonwealth Day.