On 31 October - 1 November 2013, the Annual International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) Business Meeting and the International Conference on Access Policy of Higher Education was held in Beijing. As one of the ten members of IALEI, the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University hosted this conference. The deans or representatives attended this conference, who came from other nine member institutions: Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom; Faculty of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA; Ontario Institute for Studies Education, University of Toronto, Canada; Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne, Australia; Department of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark; National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; College of Education, Seoul National University, South Korea; School of Education, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Faculty of Education, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. More than 100 participants attended this conference. Besides the IALEI representatives, there were also experts, scholars, teachers and students from Singapore, Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Finland, Mexico, etc.

Access Policy of Higher Education is an issue of universal concern. The attendees conducted in-depth exchanges and had a warm discussion about the theoretical foundations of access policy of higher education, higher education access and equality in higher education, quality in higher education, student subsidy, internationalization of higher education and access policy for international students.

The opening ceremony was chaired by Prof. Wang Yingjie of Beijing Normal University. President Dongqi extended his warm welcome to the guests at home and abroad, and fully affirmed the importance as well as necessarity of this conference. The invited keynote speakers are the leading scholars of this field, including Prof. Zhong Binglin, President of Chinese Society of Education and professor of Beijing Normal University; Prof. Geoff Whitty, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Education, London University; Prof. Gloria Ldson-Billings from University of Wisconsin-Madison; Prof. Richard James, vice president of the University of Melbourne; and Prof. Sharon Robinson, president of AACTE.

The participants held that facilitating social fairness and justice by the promotion of equality in higher education and fostering education equality by the promotion of quality were the mainstream value and pursuance of higher education. During this process, the cooperation of government, the market, universities and the society might seem to be the best bet for solving the bottleneck and plight of higher education’s development.At the closing ceremony, ten IALEI deans signed the memorandum of establishing a new alliance. Prof. SHI Zhongying, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, passed on the Alliance flag to the representative of University of Sao Paulo, the next host institution of the Alliance.

The new alliance is renamed International Network of Educational Institutions (INEI), aiming at sharing the common experience and achievements among the community of educational institutions. Each of the member institutions has received international recognition for its teaching programs and research. This conference will strengthen the cooperation and communication as well as the mechanism of dialogue between Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University and other international faculties of education. In addition, it also helps to promote global impact of Beijing Normal University.