Events like the recent violent rioting in France, largely by disenfranchised youths, had only heightened the debate.

The organisation was responding to demand from member states to provide a platform for ministers to think about a pedagogical shift, said Dr Baron Cohen.

At the core of the new model were proposals for the use of the arts - no longer a marginal discipline but with their creative languages vital across the curriculum - to teach cultural literacy. The aim was a new arts-based pedagogy to create personal and community transformation through story-telling, dance, drama and sculpture.

The independent performance-based arts educator and cultural activist from Brazil, who is also president of the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA), has been in Asia, holding a series of workshops to explain the importance and possibilities of the conference and what it will advocate.

'It can't be underestimated how serious this [educational shift] is if you situate it in the context of the crises in schools, from teachers unable to cope with the degree of competition and conflict that pupils are bringing from their homes or from their streets into the classroom, to the amount of pressure that young people are facing,' he said.

His visit was part of a region-by-region series of consultations and debates that have marked a six-year build-up towards the conference.

Adding pressure to the debate was the fact that this century was putting far greater emphasis on design rather than production, requiring different workplace skills and a more creative workforce.

Australia and New Zealand were among countries leading the way with this kind of outlook, he said. 'This is not just visionary thinking which has no foundation in political reality or curriculum development,' he said. 'What Unesco wants to do next year is develop the political will worldwide to make this transition.'

The problem was that many of the new concepts had developed unevenly within countries and around the world, he said. The conference would aim to integrate them into a new, complete educational approach.

Ministers and educationalists would hear of the necessity to rethink what school was 'so that it is no longer separate from the home or community'.

This involved a new way of training teachers, with more continuous training rather than occasional in-service opportunities. There should also be more team-teaching, allowing teachers to see themselves through the eyes of another educationalist, to prepare and evaluate together, and to make learning dialogic rather than teacher-centred.

They would also be told of the need for pupils to become co-educators, which had enormous social consequences, he said. 'People start to feel responsible not in terms of their social duty but because they have pleasure of taking responsibility and seeing the results of their own actions.'

But crucial to a shift were arts educators - those who used artistic languages inside educational contexts to develop a different kind of education, he said.

He described his arts education proposals as the 'performance of transformation'. Arts were a channel for personal, community and social transformation, with young people performing change rather than merely talking about it.

'You need an educational method which enables people to perform, communicate and think creatively - and theatre develops all of those skills,' he said.

Arts educators needed to consider what drama techniques could develop social and interpersonal skills, rather than merely thinking about producing a school play. 'It will be important that people can study the knowledge and possibilities that a particular artistic medium provides. 'But much more fundamental is to use all of these different creative arts languages as the foundation for all study,' he said.

Dr Baron Cohen is also promoting a world congress in July 2007 in Hong Kong, organised by IDEA, to bring together drama, education and theatre practitioners from around the world to exchange ideas on drama's potential to develop the new educational direction.

That conference, to be hosted by the Hong Kong Drama/Theatre Education Forum (TEFO), looks set to involve 150 countries.

Dr Baron Cohen will give workshops in Shanghai, Beijing, Taiwan and Korea in a bid to motivate teachers and arts practitioners to see themselves as leading voices and people who can make a contribution to the TEFO congress.

With governments facing increasing difficulties in recruiting enough teachers, and with growing concern about rising levels of violence in society, education must now focus on the depths of exclusion many citizens were feeling, he added.

The world already had a theatre of competition, insecurity and anxiety inside the classroom, he said. 'So what we need are theatres of co-operation. The proposal is that we need to transform that drama of competition into one where students exchange ideas, knowledge, develop projects and learn to work co-operatively to meet the needs of a new society.'

The concept of single disciplines should not be lost in any changes. 'You don't overlook the importance of literacy, for instance,' he said. 'What you do is see it in a much larger context - which is the development of our interpersonal relations.

'If you constantly prioritize dialogue, participation and intimate communication, people leave motivated rather than burdened.

'The arts can stimulate a great deal of hope and, in the 21st century, that's a very precious resource.'