"Fifteen years ago, you would have to explain to people why girls' education is important," said Safeena Husain, founder and chief executive of the Indian nonprofit Educate Girls. "Now the issue of education and gender is ripe."

"It's been these positive stories and also these incredibly horrific stories that have brought a sense of urgency to the issue," Husain said, referring to a recent spate of violent crimes directed against women and girls in India.

Husain, who spoke on a panel on motivating young pupils, founded Educate Girls in 2007. Her organization works with nearly 5,700 schools in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan to eliminate the gender gap in primary schools.

Before this year's meeting, the theme of which was creativity, the Qatar Foundation conducted a survey on schools in the year 2030.

The results of the survey were released on the eve of the gathering, which led to extensive discussions on the evolution of global education and the factors that are likely to shape it in the future.

"We are facing, as a planet, huge challenges in terms of environmental and technological change," said Keri Facer, a professor of education at the University of Bristol, in Britain. "These are not things that are confined to the border."

Facer was on a panel discussing the future of education degrees in a world where the opportunities to engage in higher learning have become uncoupled from conventional degree- or diploma-granting institutions, notably through the growth of massive open online courses, commonly known as MOOCs.

The Qatar Foundation survey, "School in 2030," was carried out among 645 education experts this past summer. The majority of participants predicted that certification by companies, or peer-review mechanisms - like those already offered on some business-oriented social networks such as LinkedIn - would replace academic diplomas in the future as indicators of a person's level of education or qualifications.

Nearly half agreed that by 2030, most of what students learn will come from online, with 73 percent saying the role of the teacher would shift toward a guide and mentor for students and away from the traditional role as the source of knowledge, a role predicted by only 19 percent.

New York Times News Service