BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin participated along with other distinguished panellists in a plenary session of RewirEdX— a virtual summit held to bring people together to engage in meaningful action-oriented dialogue to rethink and reimagine attitudes towards education and the new reality that follows a post-COVID world.
Ms Bogdan-Martin affirmed that in the 21st century, and in the wake of the COVID pandemic, ''there's no longer any doubt that leaving no-one behind means leaving no-one offline. Meaningful universal access to digital technologies needs to be our new global baseline.''
Right now, nearly a quarter of a billion students worldwide are still affected by COVID-19 school closures, forcing hundreds of millions of young people to rely on virtual learning. She said, ''It is a global catastrophe, and probably the largest mass disruption of education in modern history. Because the reality is that those who still lack internet access risk getting no education at all.''
ITU and UNICEF's joint report entitled ''How Many Children and Youth Have Internet Access at Home'', finds that 2.2 billion young people – or two-thirds of children and young people aged 25 and under– do not have any form of internet access at home. 1.3 billion of these young people are of school age, between 3 and 17 years, and a very large number are from low-income countries.
The Giga initiative launched by ITU and UNICEF aims to connect every school to the internet, and provide children with necessary digital public goods. Ms Bogdan-Martin underscored ''we have to also keep in mind that some groups, like girls, children with disabilities, and other young people who are disadvantaged in some way or other, face additional hurdles to getting connected.''
While digital infrastructure rollout will be important, she pointed out the many hurdles to adoption once the physical connectivity is in place, including digital skills, lack of relevant or accessible content, gender barriers, literacy barriers and more. ''As we build more partnerships to bridge the digital education divide, the 3 A's- access, affordability and availability, should underline any and all of our efforts,'' she said.
With regards to change for education, Ms Bogdan-Martin stated ''the change I would most like to see in the education space in the next decade is not just universal school connectivity, but also a true integration of technology into the learning process.''
