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ast Asian countries have agreed to adopt an action plan to improve the quality of education in the region, a summit has concluded.

The so-called EAS Education Action Plan, agreed by 18 country representatives attending the first East Asian Education Ministers Summit Meeting (EAS EMM) in Yogyakarta on Thursday, mapped the direction of the agreement.

“We consider this as a milestone because this is the first EAS EMM we ever held,” Indonesian Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh told a press conference.

Nuh said that the action plan, to be completed by 2015, would include 13 education projects.

Among the projects include regional interoperability of national qualification frameworks, EAS teaching standards frameworks and the facilitation of technical and vocational education and teacher training (TVET) and student mobility projects; three of the projects that Indonesia had expressed interest in implementing.

The summit is a follow up to the EAS leaders meeting in Bali last year. Participating countries include the 10 ASEAN member countries plus Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the Russian Federation and the US.

“The overall objective is to look at how to improve education quality with the three strategic priorities to achieve, [which will be accompanied by] system development, community improvement and connectivity,” he added.

Nuh also said that EAS EMM was a very strategic forum based on the region’s economic growth, population and gross domestic products, considering the participating countries’ combined population made up more than 50 percent of the world’s population.

The US Department of Education’s deputy secretary Anthony W. Miller expressed confidence over the success of the action plan.

Cambodian Minister of Education Im Sethy agreed, saying that the regional forum had the involvement of so many countries in the projects.

“I would like to let you know that we don’t start from scratch. We’ve been involved together before. Cambodia started from the scratch after the Mao regime but we have been receiving support from everywhere. So, we are not alone,” Sethy said.

“It’s having the momentum to show to the world that now we pay more attention to capacity building, especially for the people. We have the action plans and the references on how to work on it,” he added.