It is with great pleasure that I present this inaugural issue of IBE In Focus, the annual magazine of the International Bureau of Education (IBE). This magazine is meant to bring the IBE to the world, and to share with the public its key achievements and challenges for the year in focus. IBE In Focus captures critical moments of each year at the IBE, showcases the IBE’s flagship programs and gives the reader a textured feel for our work. The pages are of course too few to capture the breadth and depth of what the IBE is all about. But I trust that this magazine will serve as a virtual door through which you can come and experience the rich, intangible heritage that the IBE has accumulated over the nine decades of its existence.

IBE In Focus also prepares its readers for what’s to come by foreshadowing prospective efforts for the following year, ensuring that its keen readers and followers stay tuned!

This inaugural issue is special on several grounds. It is the very first publication of its kind, a medium through which the IBE reaches out to the public to inform them of its work. It coincides with the 90th anniversary of the IBE, which was established in 1925, a good two decades before the UN and UNESCO. It marks the 45th anniversary of the IBE’s Prospects, one of the oldest and most continuously published journals of international and comparative education. IBE In Focus 2015 also coincides with exciting global landmarks: the 70th anniversary of IBE’s younger relatives, the UN and UNESCO; the end of two and half decades of the Education for All movement; and the turning of a new page from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals. On a lighter note, it captures my first full year as the director of the IBE.

As the first in the series, IBE In Focus 2015 introduces the IBE’s rich history to the general public around the world. It demonstrates that unlike other premier institutions that lead the course of global education today, such as UNESCO and the World Bank, the IBE is not among the post-war institutions that were meant to promote peace, reconciliation and reconstruction. It was established to provide global intellectual leadership, to convene global dialogue on education and to set global education policies. The IBE has enjoyed its global convening power since 1929, when it became the very first intergovernmental institution on education. Since then, it has periodically convened intellectual, political and technical leaders, along with other stakeholders, to discuss and set global policies and programs in education.

With this magazine I invite the world to celebrate the IBE’s Ninety-Year Quest for Excellence in Education and to share the IBE’s commemorative logo: a collector’s item for supporters and followers of the IBE, a piece of history!

I am therefore very proud to launch IBE In Focus in such a momentous year.