A global meeting for education focused on bridging digital inequalities to avert a catastrophe that affects our common future in light of COVID
The unprecedented global social and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility and interconnectedness of our world, affecting every country, community and family.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), at the height of the pandemic, schools, universities and other educational institutions were closed in more than 190 countries, hindering the education of 1.6 billion students, while hundreds of millions of children and youth were unable to continue their education.
To address this global crisis, UNESCO held today, Thursday, an extraordinary online session of the Global Education Meeting known as GEM, or GEM, from 1 pm-5pm Paris time, hosted by the governments of Ghana, Norway and the United Kingdom.
The aim of holding this special session, according to UNESCO, “is to secure commitments from political leaders to place education at the center of national and international efforts to recover quickly, comprehensively and sustainably from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
In this context, the attendees during this extraordinary global meeting for education adopted a declaration affirming the commitment of states to ensure that the incentive packages support measures that would reduce learning losses, return the most vulnerable groups to school, and direct aid to countries and peoples in need, including those that do not reach To government programs. This declaration also condemned the recent attacks against teachers, students and schools, and reaffirmed the role of education and teachers.
Covid threatens our common future
Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the United Nations Organization for Education and Culture, began her speech by offering a tribute to the spirit of Samuel Bate, a French teacher who was recently assassinated in France, noting “all the teachers in the world who risk themselves to educate our children.”
She said that today’s meeting comes “to confront an exceptional situation that threatens the future of our children and youth – that is, our common future,” stressing that mobilizing today at the highest level of global education is crucial.
Noting that the Covid-19 pandemic turned the education system overnight, and suddenly deprived up to 1.6 billion students from schools around the world, last spring, she emphasized that “in the midst of the crisis, we realized more than ever before that education is Global public good. ”
Furthermore, she stressed the importance of facing this emergency and looking at the same time at the long term “because education, first and foremost, is what builds our future.”
UNESCO, through the Global Education Alliance and its 150 partners, has united the efforts of all, especially towards the most vulnerable.
Despite these efforts, Azoulay said, a third of the world’s students have not been able to reach these solutions. Thus, the educational crisis has exacerbated inequalities.
In this context, she called for work to reopen schools while “ensuring that all safety measures are taken”, and allocating funding for education and training in national stimulus packages, saying:
“If we don’t allocate this funding now, we will settle for a much bleaker future.”
A disaster that affects an entire generation
Teachers and students wear face masks and maintain physical distancing at school in Cambodia.
In a video message to the meeting, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated what he warned in his policy brief on education and Covid-19, saying that there is a catastrophe that may affect an entire generation, while the Covid-19 pandemic does not continue to wreak havoc in the education of students around the world.
The Secretary-General reminded the meeting participants that the pandemic had “a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable and marginalized children and youth.”
“The progress we have made, especially for girls and young women, is being threatened,” he said.
In this context, he called for “supporting the recovery of learning in low- and middle-income countries – and including education in every stimulus package.”
To successfully avert the crisis, Mr. Guterres emphasized the importance of recognizing education as a “global shared good”, and for investing more in teachers, in safe schools and in those most likely to be left behind, saying:
“We will succeed by investing in communications and digital technologies to re-imagine education.”
No one is left behind in digital learning
The meeting, which was held via the Internet, brought together a large crowd of heads of state and government, UN officials and representatives of organizations concerned with education, in addition to distinguished guests, including Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Advocacy of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, UNESCO Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education, and the founder and president of the Education Above All Foundation; Mr. Gordon Brown, United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education; Mr. Tarman Shanmogaratnan, Prime Minister of Singapore and Co-Chair of the Global Education Forum; Ms. Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In her speech to the Global Education Meeting, Sheikha Moza indicated that the education sector is at a crossroads, explaining that when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the systems we relied on in the past were not able to effectively adapt to serve all children.
She reminded that the inequalities that we accepted as part of our unfair reality – such as the digital divide – have exacerbated significantly. “At the same time, digital communication in education has become an absolute necessity.”
The UNESCO Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education asked, “How can we accept this unfair digital divide, when the only way to learn for many is through digital devices,” adding that “the most affected children are indeed the most marginalized children!”
In this context, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals advocacy urged to rise to the level of the challenge, “democratizing digital learning, humanizing technology, and allocating curricula.”
Sheikha Moza emphasized that cross-sector collaboration and innovation are the only way forward. “Let’s take this moment to build a new future – a future that leaves no one behind in accessing digital learning,” she said.
An announcement stressing the protection of education from the effects of Covid
Heads of state and government and ministers from more than 10 countries, as well as a number of international partners, who participated in the Extraordinary Global Online Education Meeting, adopted a declaration in which they pledged to safeguard funding for the education sector and define measures to be adopted during the next year in order to protect education from impacts. The devastating consequences of the disruption caused by COVID-19.
The declaration approved at the meeting defines the basic priority actions for achieving education recovery in the next fifteen months, which are as follows:
Take all necessary measures to reopen schools in a safe and inclusive manner.
Supporting all teachers as they work in the field, and paying more attention to their training and professional development.
Investing in developing social and emotional skills in order to acquire the competencies needed to find a new job.
Reducing the digital divide that caused the exclusion of a third of the world’s students from education.
The implementation of these priority measures requires at least the protection of the budgets allocated to education, if not increased.
Source: United Nations website