Profile: Sir John Daniel
Mister Education
Sir John Daniel has devoted his life to learning. He has served on the IB’s Council of Foundation and is a champion of international teaching programmes, says Pam Upton
Sir John Daniel is a biographer’s nightmare. His full curriculum vitae (CV) would take up an entire issue of this magazine, and even then it would be out of date before the ink was dry. At the last count, he had 30 doctorates, fellowships and professorships from universities and professional bodies in 16 countries. He helped steer the IB through a crucial period of growth and change in the 1990s and received a knighthood in 1994 for services to higher education. He’s served on countless committees, councils and societies, and is in constant demand as a speaker at conferences all around the world. All this while pursuing a distinguished career in open and distance education. Not bad for a student dropout.
Currently president of the Commonwealth of Learning, Sir John spent the first half of his working life in universities. He took courses in every institution, experiencing for himself the highs and lows of student life.
He happily relates how one course took him half a century to complete.
“Back in 1992, I was working for the Open University in the UK and I’d just finished a Diploma in Theology by part-time distance study,” he explains. “I was looking for another course to do, and my wife, Kristin, decided it was about time I finished the Masters I’d abandoned 25 years earlier.”
The registrar at Montreal’s Concordia University must have been astonished to receive an application from the vice-chancellor of the Open University.
“They sent a very kind letter saying that unfortunately the course I’d studied was now obsolete,” recalls Sir John. “However, because my CV showed that I’d made some use of what I’d studied all those years ago, they agreed to have me back.”
He spent a month completing his thesis and graduated in 1996, gaining yet another qualification and creating a heartening story for struggling students everywhere.
The 1990s also brought Sir John into the IB.
From the beginning, he was motivated as much by personal conviction as professional interest, since his daughter, Catherine, was a student at the United World College of the American West in New Mexico. In 1992, he was invited to join the Council of Foundation, becoming vice-president in 1997. During this period of rapid growth for the IB, crucial decisions had to be made about the curriculum and organizational structure. Both the Primary and Middle Years Programmes were introduced at this time, a source of continuing pride for Sir John and his colleagues, but controversial at the time.
“Some people were unconvinced,” he remembers. “Whenever you have something good like the Diploma Programme, you tend to be wary about changing it.”
Although pressure of work led him to leave the council in 1999, Sir John has followed the IB’s progress with special interest. Issues of internationalism, access and e-learning, which have dominated his career, are also central to the IB’s current strategy. As assistant director for education at UNESCO from 2001-03, his priority was Education for All, a global campaign aimed at providing quality basic education for all children and adults by 2015. He’s delighted it’s now part of the IB’s development plan.
“There’s bound to be tension between the idea of an international education programme and the need to adapt the curriculum to local needs,” he says.
“No one would argue everything must be the same for every school in every country. What should be possible, though, is to ensure equal outcomes for students across the world, no matter what their circumstances.”
In his role as president of the Commonwealth of Learning, Sir John helps developing countries to improve access to education through technology. He foresees great opportunities for the IB in harnessing e-learning technologies to widen access. For him, the quality versus access debate is a “phoney dilemma”.
“Quality education used to be defined by the fact that few people had access to it,” he says. “This is no longer the case. Change is seldom easy, especially in successful organizations, but modern technologies offer the potential to bring more courses to more students at less cost.”
Looking back at his time in the IB, Sir John feels a mixture of pride and gratitude.
“It taught me that running an international organization is very difficult,” he says. “But the potential rewards are inestimable. From the start, the IB’s definition of ‘international’ has been two-fold. It means a qualification accepted across the world but also internationally-minded citizens with the wisdom and determination to change that world for the better. The second meaning of ‘international’ has never been more necessary.”
CV Sir John Daniel
1942
Born in England
Education and qualifications
1960
Awarded an Open Scholarship (Natural Sciences) to Oxford University, gaining First Class Honours degree in Metallurgy in 1965
1965-69
Université de Paris, Doctorate in Physical Sciences
1970-75
Sir George Williams University, Montreal
(part-time)
1992
Diploma in Theology, Thorneloe University, Ontario
1996
Master of Arts (Educational Technology), Concordia University, Montreal
1975-2001
Various distance education courses at Télé-université, Athabasca University and the Open University, UK
Professional career
1969-73
Professor, Department of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Montreal
1973-77
Directeur des Études, Télé-université, Quebec
1978-80
Vice-president for Learning Services, Athabasca Open University, Alberta
1980-84
Vice-rector, Concordia University, Montreal
1984-90
President, Laurentian University, Ontario
1990-2001
Vice-chancellor, UK Open University
2001-2004
Assistant director-general for Education, UNESCO
2004-
President, Commonwealth of Learning
Non-executive positions have included
1982-83
President, Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education
1982-85
President, International Council for Distance Education
1988-89
President, Canadian Association for Distance Education
1992-99
IB Council of Foundation (vice-chair 1996-7, vice-president 1997-9)
1994
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to higher education
Best known (of 250) publications:
Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education (Kogan Page, 1996)
