The Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) is the most important forum for deliberation on the Commonwealth education and learning agenda and its relationship with other sustainable development priorities. The CCEM is the second-largest meeting organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

CCEMs have been taking place roughly every three years since 1959, when the first meeting was held in Oxford and where the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP), an intra-Commonwealth network of post-graduate study opportunities that boasts an alumni in excess of 25,000 citizens – including several Heads of Government.

The series of conferences, previously known as Commonwealth Education Conferences (CEC) was restyled as the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) on the 25th anniversary in 1984 on the occasion of the 9th Conference in Cyprus.

The 21st Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers (21CCEM)  which was to take place in 2020 has been postponed to later in 2021. The conference will now take place in Nairobi, Kenya from Wednesday, 27 April to Thursday, 28 April 2022.