Abstract: Sixth InternationalConference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI) in Brazil, May 2009, coordinated on behalf of UNESCO organised by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL).As in life, however, the best-laid plans often go awry.In this case, two weeks prior to its scheduled start, the Conference was postponed because of the general global public health concerns associated with the spread of the so-called ''swine flu'' virus A (H1N1).Developments on CONFINTEA VI are picked up later in this Editorial.For now, though, IRE appears as originally planned.One of the organising principles adopted in the selection of contributions to this edition was geography, in order to give representation to all five UNESCO regions (Africa; Arab States; Asia and the Pacific; Europe, North America and Israel; and Latin America and the Caribbean).In truth, this follows from IRE's overall editorial policy, as one of its roles is to reflect work from around the world, and thus to redress the usual preponderance, in academic journals, of articles from the North.However, assembling the content of IRE is not solely a matter of choosing from the available pool of submissions and engineering a regional balance.One job of the Editor is to shape each edition coherently so that it is not a random collection of apparently unconnected papers.The general unifying theme in this instance is achievement, equity and quality in schools.At first, this might seem to be quite a broad set of categorisations -and each of these itself would certainly merit at least an entire volume -yet the reader will find that common concerns and issues run throughout.Even the rather mechanical process of creating geographical parity in the pages of IRE is not necessarily a straightforward affair.A notable instance is the paucity of material from the Arab States, a subject which was discussed by IRE's Editorial Board meeting in March this year.There was a concern that the journal might be unknown or inaccessible to readers and writers of Arabic.The action taken to address this is to include, from next year, abstracts in Arabic, and similarly in Chinese.The hope is to attract more Arabic-and Chinese-speaking readers and authors.The work of our contributors will also be exposed to an audience which up to now has been largely unable to gain access to IRE.Well, that is the theory, and we will now have to see if it works in practice.We hope that, with the support of our publisher, we will be able to monitor the online usage of IRE, and that our expectations are borne out.In any case, this is a major step forward: the