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GLOBAL
EDUCATION COALITION |
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June
2021 |
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RiccardoMayer/Shutterstock.com |
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Last
month, we celebrated Africa Day, and this year’s
theme, “Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for
Building the Africa We Want”, is at heart the
All-Africa Students Union’s (AASU) mission. COVID-19
posed a significant threat to Africa’s strong
cultural identity, testing our resolve to remain
united in the face of unprecedented and simultaneous
national crises. The impact of the pandemic in each
country varied in severity, but none have emerged
unscathed; some economies declined while others
stalled; democracies were tested with diverse
results; healthcare systems became strained or
neared collapse, and in some countries, schools
closed without any comprehensive plans to reopen. Throughout
the pandemic, Africa’s determination has been
demonstrated by its youth, who initiated countless
projects to help minimise the effects of the
pandemic: from food banks in Ghana to 50% fees
reduction campaign in Cape Verde. But, now
is the time to look beyond the chaos and accelerate
our joint efforts to build back better. As African
young people, we are ready to lead the way, but our
futures depend on your solidarity and partnership. Quality
education remains the greatest tool at our disposal
to build resilient societies that not only guarantee
the freedom and safety of all African citizens but
strengthen our art, culture and heritage. Yet,
according to UNESCO, more than 11 million girls are
expected to remain out of school post-COVID-19. We
refuse to accept this injustice and are partnering
with UNESCO, as a member of the Global Education
Coalition and the 100 Million campaign on the
Girls-Back-To-School Initiative, supporting young
people across the Continent to take action at the
local and national levels to ensure girls are not
left behind as schools reopen. In
solidarity and friendship, Peter
Kwasi Kodjie, Secretary-General of the All-Africa
Students Union (AASU) |
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Celebrating
Africa Day |
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Global
Education Coalition in Action - Africa
39
Countries Number
of projects in Africa 66
Projects Number
of additional projects in discussion in Africa 38
projects Global
Education Coalition Africa Day brochure:
UNESCO
Paper on COVID-19 Education Response in Africa:
UNESCO
Summary report from Global Education Coalition
(GEC) Forum:
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Global
Education Coalition explores the digital learning
turn in Africa
GEC
Virtual Forum ‘The Digital Learning Turn in
Africa: The Role of Local Eco-Systems.’
RichTPhoto/Shutterstock.com On
25 May 2021, on the occasion of Africa Day, UNESCO
brought together ministers from the African
continent, education stakeholders and private sector
representatives to the online Global Education
Coalition (GEC) Forum with over 200 participants. The
increased interest in leveraging technology to
strengthen education systems offers the opportunity
to reimagine, through diverse cross-sectoral
partnerships, a new future of education for the
African continent, building on the goals of Africa
2063, the Continental Education Strategy for Africa
(CESA) and the Sustainable Development Goal on
Education.
The
Forum was an occasion to bring together a diverse
group of stakeholders to help explore opportunities
for investment in technology, including open
education resources, and to ensure continuous and
equitable learning in Africa. Read the
summary report from the virtual Forum. |
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Microsoft’s
education solutions
Supporting the transition to
remote learning in Africa
Through
Microsoft’s engagement in the Global Education
Coalition, they have supported more than 30
countries across the world. Microsoft’s engagement
brings together their stack of education solutions,
including free Office 365 for Education, Teams,
Windows devices and education data solutions along
with our Global Training Partners to improve teacher
skills. In Africa, Microsoft has supported: ·
In
Gambia - plan
to provide O365, connectivity, and teacher devices,
funded locally by UNICEF. A free deployment of
Office365 for education is complete and Microsoft is
now working on the rollout to students and teachers
based upon connectivity.
·
In
Senegal
ramped up O365 for teachers and students. 200
teachers are becoming ‘master trainers’ together
with the UNESCO team to train colleagues across the
country in the use of Microsoft Teams for remote
learning. 1 million learners are being set up to use
Microsoft Teams for remote learning, with the plan
that all learners will be on-boarded.
·
In
Comoros -
more than 300,000 students at all levels of
education now have access to remote learning,
through Microsoft 365 integration with a Microsoft
partner Learning Management System (LMS), workers
within the Ministry of Education, school staff and
parents also have access. Teachers, administrators
and deans were trained using the ‘train the
trainers’ (TOT) program.
·
In
Sudan
- providing 350,000 students access to education,
the Microsoft partner delivered the first free
learning transformation initiative in Sudan, the
Learning Management System (LMS) integrated with
Microsoft 365, provided training to 600 teachers and
helped establish a new educational format that
allowed students to continue learning.
Moving
forward, systems can make a complete transition to
digital using Microsoft Azure data and Artificial
Intelligence (AI) solutions. While institutions can
leverage Microsoft’s skill-development offering to
create personalized learning experiences and
certification opportunities for students.
A
new phase of Microsoft’s engagement in Africa is now
taking place through the Coalition’s
Global Skills Academy
(GSA). Through the GSA, Microsoft is offering
professional development for faculty and trainers in
the TVET institutions, as well as curriculum content
for students on a range of key digital topics from
the Microsoft Learn platform. The countries involved
are Morocco, Liberia and Tunisia. On
18-20 June, Microsoft in partnership with UNESCO,
and as a contribution to the Coalition’s
Gender Flagship,
will hold a 3-day Virtual AI Hackathon for high
school students in Africa, Europe and the Middle
East. Guided by mentors and Microsoft tutors, they
will learn the processes and methods behind AI
development, and build skills that allow them to
take ethical control of its development and use. The
event will culminate in a design challenge, where
small teams of students will design the outline of a
product that applies AI to a sustainability issue
and pitch their idea to a group of ‘investors’.
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Transforming
Education in West Africa: (Re)ImaginEcole
Improving
the quality of distance education for 6.6 million
students and 200,000 teachers
The
French-speaking African regional online learning
platform
Imaginecole.africa was
launched on 21 December 2020 as a key component of a
Global Partnership for Education (GPE) funded
project to improve the quality of distance education
in ten countries: Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Côte
d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad and
Togo. Imaginecole offers a large-scale learning
platform for distance education for 6.6 million
students and professional development support for
200,000 teachers with over 600 educational
resources.
Imaginecole
will be enriched in the coming months with locally
produced content by teams working with UNESCO and
GEC partners to improve their skills. Resources
range from high-quality educational videos and
interactive lessons to downloadable printouts. It
covers a comprehensive emergency response for
learning both in connected and disconnected
locations.
Currently
all countries have completed the first round of
training of trainers sessions at national level and
teachers are also being trained at sub-national
level. ImaginEcole
is much more than just a platform, it is an
initiative that aims at strengthening national and
regional distance education ecosystems and
re-imagining the way quality education is delivered,
making national education systems more resilient to
shocks and crisis.
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Curriculum
Digitization in Ghana
Aligning
national curriculum to Wikidata and Wikibase In
2020, the absence of curriculum documentation in
digitally usable formats hindered education systems
quick response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on
face-to-face learning. As
part of the Global Education Coalition, Wikimedia is
seeking to launch a proof of concept and pilot
project in Ghana as part of broader efforts to align
national curricula to content on Wikimedia projects
and other Open Educational Resources (OERs). The
Wikidata for Education project endeavors to
extract and structure curriculum data within
Wikidata to enable the
easy aligning of national curricula to OERs while
making them more discoverable for learners and
educators. It will also enable developers to easily
innovate education products and applications in
alignment with national curricula. The
Wikimedia Foundation has completed consultations
with the Wikidata community, UNESCO, and education
stakeholders resulting in an initial data model for
the pilot project. The next step is to work with an
experienced Wikidata community member to support
project partners to add the Ghana national
curriculum to Wikidata.
Once
data about the national curriculum is added to
Wikidata, in-country implementing partners will
train 100 teachers on how to use Wikipedia in the
classroom, how to use Wikidata to find
curriculum-aligned content, and how to coordinate
with the larger Wikimedia community to identify and
close curriculum-aligned knowledge gaps on Wikimedia
projects.
Providing
live education and health support for all teachers
in South Africa
A
real-time chat-based learning and mentorship
platform for education, available 24/7
The
onset of COVID-19 exposed, more than ever, the gaps
in access to information and communication
technology in South Africa. In September 2020, the
Minister of Basic Education (the Honourable Mrs
Angie Motshekga) launched TeacherConnect to
bridge this digital divide with WhatsApp-based
digital support for Educators, Parents and Learners. TeacherConnect
offers an ever-growing wealth of resources,
including professional development, learning
materials and training and teaching resources such
as workbooks, planners, notes, annual teaching
plans, reading materials and curriculum recovery.
TeacherConnect provides personalised chat support,
both human and menu-driven (and soon AI-supported)
and gathers real-time feedback for government
decision-makers.
While
the initial focus has been on expanding the reach
and usage of the TeacherConnect WhatsApp channel
with a 150,000 user base, the programme has also
grown to better cater for Educators where they are.
TeacherConnect has become a powerful gateway to
online platforms free to access (zero data charges)
from all South Africa’s mobile operators. TeacherConnect
also offers HealthCheck – a COVID-19 digital risk
assessment and mapping tool that enables the
Department of Health to track and monitor potential
COVID-19 cases, with a ‘receipt’ being issued to the
user giving a Low, Medium or High risk response. Notably,
the platform has been used as part of President
Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Youth Employment
Initiative to reach and employ 320,000 youths.
TeacherConnect provided registration information,
access to FAQs and a live helpdesk for user queries
and escalations.
Curious
Learning’s open-source learning content
Localizing
the app across Africa and scaling up for even
greater impact Curious
Learning is a non-profit that curates, localizes,
optimizes and distributes open-source learning
content that provides a path to literacy in 50+
languages, with a strong focus on African languages.
Harnessing the natural curiosity of a child,
together with the neuroscience of how the brain
learns to read, a child can learn to read using
low-cost technology, regardless of proximity to
schools or even access to literate adults. Curious
Learning works with multiple partners, including
multilateral institutions and governments, to bring
localized apps directly to children.
With
a proven track record of high impact content and
close to 2 million downloads, the opportunity for
scalability is now Curious Learning’s focus. As
part of the Global Education Coalition, Curious
Learning, with support from UNESCO has informed 22
African countries' MoEs of the available apps which
each country can use to tailor their own
implementation strategy. Apps have been localised
into 24 Africa specific languages such as Amharic,
Kinyarwanda, Swahili, Luganda, Shona, Igbo, Somali,
Hausa, Oromo, Wolof, Yoruba and 11 official South
African languages. These localized translations are
in addition to world languages spoken in Africa such
as English, French, Arabic and Portuguese. Currently
there are downloads across 38 African countries. Experiments
using SMS communication and social media to inform
parents of the available content have proven to be
highly cost effective (between USD 0.2 to USD 1) to
achieve a download, and supplement learning in even
some of the most impoverished neighborhoods and
communities.
Community
Systems Foundation’s open source education
management information system
Quality
tools for the management and monitoring of
national COVID-19 emergency and recovery plans To
support the early and safe return to in-person and
hybrid education during and in the aftermath of the
COVID-19 pandemic, under the auspices of the Global
Education Coalition and in partnership with UNESCO,
Community Systems Foundation has recently released a
vaccination application,
OpenEMIS Vaccinations and
Health module. This module is designed to
collect data on tests and vaccinations, supporting
vaccination campaigns and safe school reopenings.
The OpenEMIS Vaccinations and Health module can be
implemented as a stand alone solution or introduced
to strengthen systems in countries already using
OpenEMIS. Community
Systems Foundation’s contribution follows over six
years’ engagement with national education
authorities in the deployment of
OpenEMIS, an open
source Education Management Information System.
Responding to the diversity of contexts and
challenges across the region, OpenEMIS has been
implemented in a variety of ways to improve
education delivery to students, for staff, and
policymakers within Ministries of Education. In
Lesotho, OpenEMIS has been deployed to collect
annual school census data, now more efficiently than
ever. Through mobile technology, school census can
reach remote areas with limited or no
connectivity. In Namibia, the OpenEMIS team is
providing technical assistance towards the
development and deployment of Examinations data
system, capturing critical marks nationwide. In
South Africa, the Department of Basic Education is
planning to take a hands-on approach to enhancing
the OpenEMIS software, contributing to the global
initiative and benefiting from it, aiming to
strengthen the resilience of education and learning
systems.
Smart
Classrooms
CreateView’s
industry-education integration and higher
education in Africa CreateView
is a member of the Global Education Coalition in
order to contribute to the efforts of the
international community to help ensure continuity of
learning and foster innovative solutions for
education. In this context, CreateView has come into
agreement to provide Smart Classroom for
universities in four African countries: Ghana,
Namibia, Nigeria and Senegal.
This
initiative builds on CreateView’s pursuit to support
smart education for more than 10 years and past
collaboration with UNESCO and other partners.
CreateView introduced China's experience of
cooperation in production, teaching and research,
and promoted the ecological construction of
educational informatization industry. In 2018,
CreateView forged partnership with UNESCO-ICHEI to
build demonstration smart classrooms in six
countries in Africa, including Kenya, Uganda,
Nigeria, and Gambia. In
2019, CreateView entered into cooperation agreement
with Mombasa County, Kenya, to participate in the
construction of East Africa's largest port of smart
education equipment industrial park, collaborated
with the University of Nairobi (Kenya) and Makerere
University (Uganda) to jointly formulate and
implement national education informatization
standards of Nairobi and Uganda. In 2020, CreateView
reached an agreement with the Global Education
Foundation, and obtained the approval of the Supreme
Council of Universities to establish a modern
Chinese-Egyptian university with smart education
solution. CreateView
is committed to cooperating with other members of
GEC to contribute to reimagining education and
learning in the future, especially in support of
industry-education integration and higher education
in Africa. |
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A
call for research/ contributions |
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Thanakorn.P/Shutterstock.com Call
for research:
Digital Inclusion as key to rights-based
education recovery In
support of new research UNESCO is conducting on
digital inclusion, we are calling on GEC members
help provide data, insights, examples and/or
research in answer of the following: ·
Digital
Divide/Wellbeing:
How do digital technologies foster inclusion or
exacerbate inequalities, both academic and social,
among young people?
·
Data
Privacy and protection:
How do we safeguard a child’s right to privacy in
rapidly expanding online learning environments
(increasing classroom recording, automation,
proprietary platform use, and online assessment
practice), and ensure that the use of technologies
is ethical and appropriate for educational purposes
and does not expose children to violence or misuse
of their personal data? ·
Vulnerable
Groups/Disability:
How does digital technology have the potential to
bridge the divide, in particular between the
disabled and non-disabled? How have educational
services for students with special needs been
adapted to the digital environment?
·
Digital
Skills and Citizenship:
How can digital technologies be leveraged to expand
access to high-quality educational opportunities
that support learners and children’s critical,
civic, creative and cultural engagement? If
you would like further clarification on this call to
research, please contact
righttoeducation@unesco.org.
Call
for contributions:
Learning solutions to catch up for lost
learning UNESCO
is calling for contributions and support from
partners to provide learning solutions that help
children, students and youth, who are most affected
by COVID-19 to catch up for lost learning. We are
facilitating the matching process between volunteer
educators, providers of learning solutions and
learners within and across countries.
If
you have resources, connection, networks or ideas
that can be matched with the following needs for the
deployment of technology and level appropriate
catch-up learning programmes at scale and with
speed, we would be delighted to hear from you: ·
Donation
of hardware (tablets, computers, etc.) ·
Financing
·
Connection
to the most disadvantaged and/or vulnerable children
and students ·
Networks
of teaching volunteers (e.g. tutors, educators,
caregivers, etc.) ·
Delivery
of learning programmes at the local level (online,
offline, hybrid) For
expression of interest or enquiries, please send
them to
globallearninghouse@unesco.org,
preferably before 20 June
2021. Call
for contributions:
A conversation to broaden the scope of the
right to education On
the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the adoption
of the Convention against Discrimination in
Education on 10 December 2020,
UNESCO launched a conversation examining the
changing dimensions of the right to education,
particularly within the context of the COVID-19
pandemic, in order to build back better in the
educational recovery.
This
Conversation aims to encourage a reflection on
broadening the scope of the right to education and
is open to all. It poses three key questions:
You
are invited to share your ideas on the issues at
stake, emerging trends and elements to be considered
in relation to these three questions. Join the
conversation
here.
Call
for contributions:
Share your photos of the impact of school
closures on girls and boys
The
Gender Flagship is calling on Global Education
Coalition members and supporters to submit
photographs illustrating the impact of the COVID-19
school closures on girls and boys worldwide.
Selected photographs will be included in the global
study on the gender dimensions of the school
closures to be published in September 2021.
Photos
may depict children and adolescents engaging in
various types of distance learning, or coping with
the effects of the school closures on their daily
lives. They could also show the actions undertaken
by students, teachers, parents or others to support
continuity of learning, and safeguard health,
nutrition, and protection from violence during the
COVID-19 school closures. Photographs
must be submitted by
30 June 2021 to
gender.ed@unesco.org as .jpg files, with an
image resolution of 300dpi or more (original or
highest resolution), together with the grant of
rights form and information for the copyright
(agency, photographer).
Call
for contributions:
Expand the reach of your educational resources.
Upload them into UNESCO distance-learning
platforms! We
would be happy to promote your Open Educational
Resources into UNESCO-driven distance learning
platforms under development for Africa and
Asia-Pacific (Francophone and Anglophone).
The
two main target users of the platforms are: students
from primary and secondary levels; and teachers
wanting to learn how to improve their remote
education skills - fully digital, hybrid learning,
no/low tech, and all related subjects that are
useful in the new context of education. Learn more
here. |
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Events |
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10th
Africa Students and Youth Summit: Act, Inspire and
Scale-Up – Giving a Fair Share to End Child Labour
– 22-23 July 2021 Africa
is also currently home to the largest number of
child labourers in the world, over 70 million, and
these numbers are expected to rise in the wake of
the pandemic. Every child should be learning in
school, not working to survive, and only through our
combined efforts will this be realised.
The
All Africa Students Union is inviting all GEC
members to join them for the 10th Africa Students
and Youth Summit that will be building continental
and intergenerational partnerships under the theme,
“Act, Inspire and Scale-Up – Giving a Fair Share to
End Child Labour”. Please register for the summit at
asys2021.aasuonline.org
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Welcome
to a new member |
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We
would like to extend a warm welcome to the following
member that recently joined the Global Education
Coalition. A full listing of all Coalition members
is also available online. |
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Contact |
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For
more information - or should you have any questions,
comments or suggestions, please reach out via email
to the Global Education
Coalition team. For additional news, you may
also refer to the Global Education Coalition
website. |
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