 Welcome to the session, Closing the Pandemic Education Gap. I am Emilia Navigas. I am Senior Fellow and Co-Director at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. But I'm also a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Education and Skills. And thus, I am especially delighted to moderate this conversation. To begin the conversation, we'd like to start with a quick poll and are asking you to please answer the question that's appearing on your screen. Question is, COVID-19 crisis has dramatically transformed education systems long-term for the better. Do you agree or disagree? While you get your answers in, I'd like to introduce our amazing group of panelists today. First, we have Tariq Algurg. He is the CEO of Dubai Cares. We also have Minister Lee Anderson, who is the Minister of Education of Finland. We have Boya Elkom, the President and CEO of Ericsson. We have Henrietta Ford, Executive Director of UNICEF. We have Maria Gabriela. She's the Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education, and Youth of the European Commission. And last but not least, we have Minister Matsya Mochega. She's the Minister of Basic Education of South Africa. To begin, we will have an interactive conversation with all these amazing panelists for about 30 minutes. And then we will open the floor for you, our audience, to ask questions. I am really happy to have also the concluding remarks by the managing director at the Center for the New Economy and Society of the World Economic Forum, Masadia Sahidi. So please, can you pull out the results of the poll? Wow. So the great majority of you disagree that the pandemic is going to result in better. So I think I agree with you and we have a lot to do. So let's start the conversation. But before we do that, I'd like to mention that since 2016, the World Economic Forum has established a network of country-level public-private initiatives called country accelerators to close gender innovation and skill stats. Today, the network is made of 23 countries across the three areas. And WEF is now launching a similar network focusing on K through 12 education, but closing the education gap accelerators to drive the transformation of primary and secondary education systems. South Africa, the Ministry of Basic Education will be one of the first countries to establish a closing the education gap accelerator in partnership with WEF. Additionally, each country accelerator enters into a global network of learning and better practice exchange, linked to leading experts and global champions from academia, the public and private sectors. And also knowledge partners that have demonstrated global leadership and closing education gaps can contribute to widen their impact. Sharing their learning and expertise directly into the elaboration of the action plan, fans and sharing their experiences more broadly within the network. We are thrilled that Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture has agreed to become a knowledge partner of the global learning network of the closing the education gap accelerators. So let me begin with you, Henrietta. What key interventions are needed to close the education gap created during the pandemic? Well, Emiliana, it's a very interesting puzzle for our world. And as you can see from our poll, it's not going to be an easy one, but I think we'll need three things. The first is we need to reopen schools. If schools are not open, the amount of learning that takes place is less and is for many reasons. But one is that some children just don't have access digitally and don't have access to remote learning. And other times it is that there is no teacher, there are no friends, there's no one to encourage you to learn. So open the schools and start on catch-up learning, remedial learning. We're going to need this worldwide, but it's essential. It's sort of the first thing we need to do. Then the second is we need to innovate. If we are going to come out of this pandemic stronger and better in the education system, well, then we must take advantage of the fact that we are now in a technological moment when we could use technology to help. So artificial intelligence, tablets, distance learning, remote learning, everything we can think of for no tech, low tech and high tech countries and villages so that students and teachers can learn. But we're going to need those innovations and it means that we'll need public and private partners who are there to help us develop new products and services, ed tech, job tech, artificial intelligence, it's the gamut and we'll also need the third area which is digital connectivity. With half of the world not yet connected and one out of three students who are in the connected world cannot get connected to remote learning, then it just means we're leaving a lot of the children behind and Emiliana, we're leaving a lot of girls behind because girls and women just are not online the same amount as boys and men. So we've got to change this as a world and there are some things that are just difficult like half of the families in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to electricity. So how do they get an internet connection? But we can do this, solar energy and many other ways. So we can overcome that digital divide if we want to as a world. It's going to take money though. So we're going to need lots of help, public and private and we're going to need expertise and I will just point out two of our partners, Erickson and Dubai Cares who are on this call because they are both partners who help us. And so we've been able to map one million schools in the Giga Initiative and connect 3000 schools to internet because of their help. So our goal is to connect every school in the world to the internet by the time of 2030, every learner, every teacher. We think we can do it. We've connected 500,000 students so far this year. So we're on track to be able to do this but we need partners. We've got a $5 billion bond that we are hoping with donor backing to place so we can use financial help but the world will need about 500 billion. So this is just to kickstart us but this is a dream. This is a goal that we can actually do in the next couple of years. So Emiliana, lots of work to do, but it's doable. Thank you, Henrietta. And I like how you framed it. Three things, opening schools, the most urgent thing we need to do. Second, innovating to accelerate improvements and third, connectivity. And so I think that leads me nicely to Warrior who I think is quite involved through Erickson in how important technology can be to enhance student outcomes, to enhance the student experience and enable all children to learn. How could a collaboration between the private and the public sector from your perspective be useful in this regard to achieve this goal of hopefully even before 2030 having all children with access to connectivity? Thanks for that question. I think Henrietta hit on a couple of big topics here but I want to start in the end of what happens in almost all crisis. Well, it is that it actually accelerates already ongoing changes. And in this case, it accelerates digitalization. But what I think that in a way also completely bear is the inequality that comes out of lack of connectivity. Basically, there is no digitalization without connectivity. And we know the massive amounts of schools that have been closed. It's been closed in developed world, in the Western Europe, the US, Northeast Asia, et cetera. But it's also in many regions which are less fortunate. But what we see is the digital divide that's massive and that is causing a large, I think, brewing inequality. So if we look here, for example, connected students, they are already today using 230% more time online than they did before the pandemic. So they are able in a way to compensate sometimes the lack of physical education with digital tools. We also know that actually e-learning tools are one of the most downloaded apps in the world. So this is showing the benefit that the connected have and the massive inequality that's now coming from the unconnected is something we clearly need to solve. Henrietta also said about the Giga Initiative that we have jointly with the UNICEF. It's super important to connect schools. But even at today's pace, we are going to reach a 92% mobile broadband penetration of the world's population by 2024. But that is still something we really need to put an effort on. And I really want companies work together with governments to solve this digital divide because that is actually at the heart. And I foresee that we are going to change education in the future. We come from a world where everything was classroom first. That is not, I think, the way we will do it in the future. We will have hybrid models where we combine classrooms with the use of digital tools. And those tools, they will be developed digital first, just like the rest of society. And we can develop those tools that will benefit even more areas like myself. I grew up on the Swedish countryside where we even had to drive 20 miles to fill up the moped. So it was a very rural part. We had no access to great education when I grew up. But in the future, those type of cities, villages, very rural communities, will have all the benefits of connectivity, assuming we together with the public sector drive connectivity as a global ambition. So I think here we need to join forces, governments, industries, public-private partnerships, leveraging the existing operators, creating an investment-friendly environment that's going to drive connectivity. Being in Western Europe, being in North America, being in Asia, Africa or Latin America, it's a global question. Thank you so much. And it's a very important point that you raise around how the pandemic has laid bare what were pre-existing inequalities, but has also in some ways grown them because those who had access are now able to continue learning, maybe even accelerate their learning whereas others are being left behind. So let me turn to Minister Anderson. The COVID pandemic has had a clear impact on learning and it surfaced all these existing challenges and inequities within education, even in countries that are considered outside as more equal. So I'd like to ask you, how is your ministry implementing new priorities in primary and secondary education and which priorities are more pressing in reforming the content and delivery of primary and secondary education? Thank you very much. And firstly, I think I want to stress how important it is that we manage in putting education, science and innovation really at the core and at the center of how we renew our society's post-COVID and really to see them as a key for building a more sustainable and also a more equal future after this. I think in Finland, just as well as in all other countries, the pandemic has brought about some very important lessons about our education systems and I wanted to shortly focus on two lessons and three main priorities that we're focusing on here. Firstly, the two lessons, I think the first one is what we've learned is that teachers really are our most important factor in terms of resilience and this pandemic has really shown how crucial and how dependent we are of the creativity and the leaderships of teachers, but also of the fact that our teachers have digital skills and that we invest in digital skills of teachers. The second lesson that we've learned is really the need to continue to invest in inequality on all levels of education because the pandemic really has shown a lot of inequalities in our education systems, not only in terms of connections, not only in terms of digital devices, but also in terms of digital skills, the skills you need to use these devices for learning. So, which are now our main priorities in terms of developing our education system? Firstly, I would say monitoring. The development of learning gaps must be monitored closely over the next few years and based on studies, the necessary support measures should be targeted at reducing the learning gaps in the future at all levels of education, but we really need research and we need information about the learning gap and how it shows different stages of the education system to also be able to address these issues and problems properly. Our second main priority is financial support, also very important that we are able to provide additional funding and additional financial supports in bridging the learning gaps caused by distance learning, also to help students who have dropped out or are at risk of doing so to become recommitted to education. And we've also provided additional funding for different types of necessary support measures to prevent students from dropping out, but also to enhance students' well-being on a more general level, so when we see a lot of research on the negative consequences of the pandemic in terms of the overall well-being of students and kids and young students. And our third main priority is actually that we are now funding even more future-oriented investments and also reforms our education system. So the pandemic cannot be seen as a reason to wait or to prolong certain processes, but really as a need to start doing reforms in investments in equality even sooner. We're extending the minimum school-leaving age to 18 years, a very big reform and education system. We've also started a new pupil and student counseling development program and also investing in digital competences and skills of students and children. So really making sure that we do progress and do reforms, new laws and new investments in all of these that we need to enhance equality after this pandemic. Thank you very much. And you're raised as an important issue, which is the investment issue and that we need to invest more even than before. And so let me turn to Minister Moshega, welcome. We know that the WEF and the Ministry of Basic Education have been in discussion about implementing public-private collaborations around clothing education gaps. How do you expect that such a collaboration will help both the businesses and the government to shape a lasting and inclusive path to recovery for South Africa? It helps in many ways because as a country we face huge inequalities with huge backlogs and huge inquiries in terms of your racial divide but also your class and social divide. So as a state we're unable on our own to close these gaps but with the private sector for instance, informal and structured collaboration so that it's not a company choosing five schools working there the other one choosing 10 schools working there but to make sure that in a very formal structured partnership we map out the programs to say these are the focus areas these are the doable some of the things they make want to do but we find that in the system are not doable in terms of first teacher skills themselves if they want to roll out ICTs if we've not been able in partnership with them to roll out a teaching program or a support program for teachers it won't be any helpful. In some instances even collaborations with families because children on their own may not have access to iPads or to your ICTs but parents might have smartphones and therefore just formally working with parents to make sure that indeed they allow their kids to use their devices as part of the learning program because again as a state we're unable to roll these on our own but the collaboration with the private sector what is important for us and it has really proven to work very well it has to be formal it has to be structured it has to be deliberate and we just have to work together so that the private sector does not develop programs on their own they may be good but they may not be helpful for instance our most of our big companies in ICTs helped us in developing also learning material where we have key learning which has been developed by one company and then it's an open system so that everybody can access them because that's not their core business therefore they have no reason to feel threatened that they won't get clients so we then get an open system through programs which have been developed by the private sector who does not have any interest in selling that product for instance so we've been quite fortunate that through COVID-19 we've had lots of companies especially your ICT companies which are not selling education software working with us to develop ICT materials which we use in schools they bring the research and then we just photocopy and distribute so it really makes it easier for them to have their materials accessible in schools on the other hand we benefit from the scientific expertise that they have and also from the research of academics who work with them to develop these materials for us which were not there before the advent of COVID-19 Thank you yet still I take the comments that all of you have talked about in one way or another and has to do with sort of the growing inequality that you see within and across countries and that the pandemic is really laid bare but probably expanding so let me turn to the commissioner Gabrielle in your view and from your work what are the key levers of change needed to innovate in education policy and funding so that we can really transform education and ensure that it's more equitable and that it delivers on the needs of the children for the future Thank you Thank you very much Emiliana for your question it's a great honor for me to be here First education and continuous skill development our real drivers of positive change in society however what we have seen that the pandemic and the shift to a different learning environment have put enormous pressure on education systems around the world and this has added to the existing challenges and inequalities and I think that first we have reached the point when we urgently need to do something more and to do something better to meet our citizens expectations for more inclusive and more innovative education and training system this is crucial as widening the educational and skills gap can only increase inequality so what are the levers of change that we have at our disposal at the level of the European Union just let me give you some examples first I think that what is really important is to stay united there is no single member states there is no single state that can tackle all these challenges alone and for us we have the goal to have a European education area by 2025 to have this space where knowledge quality and quality in education are here and our approach here is the lifelong learning approach and this is a key component of this policy as we want our citizens to keep pace with change of course the second thing is to use the existing instruments and the first one is Erasmus Plus program the Erasmus Plus program is a key lever of change to build this common European education area and this time for me what is really important is that we managed to meet our new Erasmus Plus program more inclusive we need to have more support for people with fewer opportunities to have this program more accessible for small organizations for newcomers and here I have to Henrietta a special thought for our girls we need we need to support them and of course we need to innovate when we talk about more inclusiveness about digital about innovation and that's why in the new program we encourage the development of blended formats of cooperation combining both physical and online activities third we need cooperation we need exchange of good practices we need mutual learning and yes in Europe we have an excellent example is our e-tweaning platform which connects schools teachers and their classes all over Europe but I must say that yes here we have always to address the issue of connectivity especially in rural and remote areas another important point minister you said it the importance of the teaching profession we need to be able to value this profession in society because without teachers no innovation no inclusion no transformation can take place and it is equally important to support teachers and create opportunities for their professional development final point yes we need investment and this time at the level of the European Union we have something very positive that's the recovery and resilience facility plans I think that never before at the European level we decided to invest so massively in digital education I can share with you our first analysis are showing that there will be 55 billion euros invested by our member states but minister you are right we need to combine investment with reforms and especially one point that is dear for me is to talk more and more about quality investment in education and that's why at the European Commission we encourage this work together with our member states and I think that this collaboration it's an example that can surface inspiration and for the cooperation with our partners at least that's our wish thank you so much commissioner Tariq last but not least I want to refer to this opportunity that many of our previous panelists has spoken to which is you know this disruption that has occurred and you know because of the pandemic we have had to engage in technology like never before can we take this opportunity to to make strategies that make learning even more accessible and I know that you and the bike carers are deeply committed to support these efforts in countries that are of low and middle income country what are some of the private and public collaborations that you've seen that have worked and what kind of future commitments are needed to support these efforts well Emiliana let me before going into what worked let's look at the situation in general and then do we have existing ones do we have ones which has potential and when we look back at the disruption we all experienced in the last 18 months it's clear that innovation and collaboration are critical and we talk about it some has done it some couldn't do it some are doing their own and with the public private partnership being at the heart of this I think we can do it you see Emiliana it's not that the partnerships don't currently exist right now there are models very successful Henrietta did mention one of them and I'll tap into it and we've seen significant growth in new ways for public private and third sector partners to work together but they tend to be on a small scale or project-based addressing only part of the problem and that's another issue when you have these small pockets and they don't have they're not designed to be scale it's an issue you have a beautiful product but you can't take the global we need to nurture partnerships that are both strategic and long-term ultimately working towards systemic level change we need partnerships that work towards innovation as Henrietta mentioned and embrace a new way of looking at things also resulting in ecosystem that can adapt to any future or can adapt to any disruption in the future we need partnerships that work hand-in-hand with civil society companies, multilaterals and make us adaptable to the fast pace changes around us if we don't do that and we depend only on governments then any large-scale disruption any financial crisis in the future will affect the main components of life such as education health climate and so on and just before jumping into some of the good examples in the world I just want to elaborate one important thing and I believe everyone on the call agrees with me but I'm going to put it as an example you see Emeliana we are the ones who are going to set the path for the future so the current youth the existing ones are depending on us and the current children who are the future youth are depending on whatever fate that comes depending on what we will design as a new ecosystem for education I fear and that's what I fear these gadgets that we have we have YouTube we have TikToks we have Instagrams and what's happening in the rural world in the developing world the illiterate people who are not able to get education they will depend on them to earn money now in my theory in how I see it education is important for two main things in life evolution of humanity and earning money that's the main two reasons we are we're doing education so we survive and we're doing education to earn money to survive that's the main essential of education if everyone starts YouTubing and dancing and making videos and earning money and talking about politics talking about anything earning money then those new generation would not get more a lot of attention on education and eventually 20 to 40 years down the road you will have three generations after us after this current generation not knowing the importance of of education and talking about there was 40 years ago there was something called a school and do you believe that there was a guy standing or a woman on a with a chalk and trying to educate us for nothing and we didn't even earn any money but with our gadgets we can earn money so we don't want education to be a story from the past that's why we have to work together Emiliana sorry for taking long but I'll go and I'll tell you what what good examples there are and that's what I feel we have to protect education we have to work together everyone together public private partnerships and when we say private we don't mean only companies we mean everyone that is non-government Giga Henrietta mentioned and I think Borja mentioned and some others we were there in the inception phase we were there with UNICEF what Henrietta didn't mention it's a partnership between UNICEF and ITU maybe I didn't pick that up and they're doing an amazing work very clear objectives to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030 very basic what needs to be done is to connect everyone government and non-government and get funding that needs a lot of funding and so far Giga has managed to convene governments funders connectivity service providers and Giga mapped over 920,000 schools over four countries that's another statistic we have to mention besides what Henrietta mentioned about we're now working on bonds and cryptocurrencies at Giga UNICEF also has Generation Unlimited the largest youth initiative in the world and it's bringing together the private sector governments multilateral organizations civil society young people to do one thing to bridge education and training to employment and entrepreneurship on a significant scale that's another successful intervention we also have the global declaration on connectivity for education that will be launched later this year in December at the Rewired Summit we, Dubai Cares and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the UAE and Expo 2020 are the main hosts but we do have partners such as the World Economic Forum UNICEF UNESCO and many other UN entities with the OECD and the World Bank WFP UNHCR anyways we have 10 strategic partners it's led by UNESCO but with public private partnerships key to the success the declaration is working to support countries in leveraging meaningful connectivity and digitalization to make education more inclusive equitable and of higher quality so these words were mentioned early on by different speakers and this is what we will be talking about in Rewired and how we can appreciate education and of course let's not forget the WEF is an important strategic partner at the summit and the WEF will be working very closely with us and the summit for public private partnership and for example this will happen through the closing the skills gap accelerators of the WEF and also the Education 4.0 accelerators of the WEF that they're convening the entire sector and I hope everyone on this call will be attending the Rewired Summit end of this year in person in Dubai at Expo 2020 Thank you for that and your comments around you know all this incredible efforts that I think are underway and we're being strengthened with these public partnerships to ensure connectivity you know most of my experience has been in Latin America where some of the countries were really at the forefront of introducing one-to-one devices but over the years we didn't see the progress in learning that was expected so I'm going to turn to minister Anderson because she talked about the important role of teachers in resilience in creativity and there's a question that we got from the audience via Slido that asks what measures can be taken to support teachers to make the transition to digital but I'd like to ask that but also what are we doing because technology is necessary but not sufficient to ensure quality education teachers are continued to be critical so how do we support them and bring them along in this change Thank you well I think one crucial thing that needs to be done is to actually have the teachers aboard when we think about how we can make sure the teachers have possibilities for continuous professional development for example something that we have invested in a lot it's not enough to educate yourself for your training to be a teacher but you really need to have real possibilities to update your skills throughout your career as a teacher and participate in different types of educational learning processes for example regarding digital skills we've also had something called the teacher training forum which was a forum that brought together teachers, students, researchers and other experts to design and decide what teacher training in the future should look like so we really wanted to involve the teachers themselves as well as researchers to kind of design these guidelines together with us and if we look specifically at digital skills in terms of teachers in almost all Finnish comprehensive schools we managed to build something called system with tutor teachers so basically it was a model of peer-to-peer learning where teachers taught each other about meaningful use of technology so this was also a way for us to kind of spread the knowledge that those teachers got who were able to participate in continuous professional development to really kind of establish a network in their own schools in their own municipalities of teachers who then got knowledge and possibilities to enhance their digital skills so I would say that there's a lot of quite easy and simple models to be used but really one key issue to involve the teachers themselves and to also involve researchers Thank you for that us I love that idea of also a partnership between those and the four front in the front lines the educators and the researchers and the academics who are who are studying these practices but how they work together is so critical we got a question from Andrea Bandelli from Science Gallery International and I'd like to direct this to Henrietta because she spoke a lot about remedial education especially as one of the priorities so the question is which role do you see for informal and out-of-school learning to close the education gaps so I think pardon me so Emiliana I think we have a need for both the formal learning and what we think of as being out of school but really it's just in a different place learning because we need to create that inspiring moment when a young person is so curious that they want to learn this is Tariq's point about why did they go to their cell phones or their laptops or their iPads or some sort of a tablet why did they even go to school it's because they get excited about learning something for the world and we've we've got to be able to catch them where they are and some are going to be in school so we want to keep the classroom and some are going to be online and some are going to be on the television some are going to be by radio and some are going to be word of mouth so we're going to have to we're going to have to find the children and the young people wherever they are so if we can adapt to them I think we'll get education right if I can also add in on the last question Lee's comments were just right about these very innovative teacher-apprentice programs we are short of teachers worldwide and so one of the areas that we're encouraging is that we can have online classes about how to become a teacher's assistant and there are lots of ways that if you are digitally literate you're not sure where you might have as a job or a profession in the future that you could learn some basic skills and if we could encourage more young people to become teachers who are digitally literate that will help all of us so some of these volunteers and then volunteers and do paid short-term gig work and then getting them into a real system where they're an intern as a teacher and then to become a teacher it would be very useful for the world I'd like to follow up on that because last week and also in the context of the UNGA meetings the Brookings and the Rockefeller institution held the 17 rooms and room four on quality education really came with a proposal about a global compact for learning teams and it goes around those lines of bringing taking advantage of the fact some of you mentioned the role that parents have played and in providing continuing education opportunities the role that technology obviously has played the teachers but also how do we maintain that momentum and really recognize that the one teacher for a classroom model is so inadequate for this century and for the kinds of education that we want that is interactive that is play base that has a lot of project-based learning and so that leads me to the third question that we've gotten from the audience that says evidence shows that the basics of kids' development is through responsive interaction and play not necessarily connectivity have you come up with innovations for early education and I think I'm going to turn that to anybody who would like to respond maybe minister Mocheca since you're working in basic education yeah it's true and I believe is that if you get them here like any other product you get them right so if we are able to get it right even from the early childhood development programs ECD which we are beginning to focus on as a country we think we will cultivate our children much better if we're able to get them young and I think that's a stage where even teachers don't find them judgmental they find them easy to work with and it actually makes a very good collaboration and atmosphere in the classrooms we've experienced that for instance where we've been able to deploy the ICTs quite early in classrooms and because they're playful they tend sometimes to be even much ahead of teachers in terms of the gadgets after some stage so you find that even the collaboration between teachers and learners and because they are as I say they're non-judgmental they really don't see a teacher who's not knowledgeable that's not intelligent but they just really find it smart that they can do it so it creates a better learning space and environment for teachers to grow and develop their skills those that did as I say with very non-judgmental young lives who as I said was like curious they're playful they tend to be more advanced than teachers I mean we've deployed ICTs in schools and it will be these young ones who tell that no teacher press this one this is how it's going to respond do this and it's really been very helpful to to to to even do developmental program for teachers who are in your foundation phases who are in your ECD phases better than in your older classes where I think the relationships tends to be very formal between learners and teachers unlike in the lower grades where the relationships are more relaxed and less formal Thank you for that I want to return to the issue of how can the private sector be even more helpful Minister Mocheka you mentioned that you have had some really good partnerships with some companies that are they're providing materials and not necessarily looking for profit but worldwide we know that for companies to be sustainable they have to make a return so I'm going to ask Boronin our representative from the private sector you know how is a company like Ericsson and other ICT companies partnering with governments and really making this happen that does benefit learning and students at scale but also makes it sustainable in the long term I think Dr Rick also referred to like not just a small investment in five schools but how do you actually support systems transformation I think this is a very good question and it's a very difficult question to answer at the same time because in reality we need to first start by understanding where do we have connectivity and where don't we have that that was one of the reasons we partnered with UNICEF and ITU around the Giga initiative because it's the first step to really see where do we have big gaps in connectivity and how can we solve them because I think even if we talk about connectivity as something it's a tool it doesn't do anything by itself but I come back to almost your first question when we think about in future education I am convinced it will be a model that combines in classroom education with digital tools so when we think about this digital tools doesn't exist without that connectivity and how do we ensure that connectivity then we're back to there are actually existing infrastructures like operators around the world that we need to create an investment environment for them to be able to invest in connectivity and here I'm going to add the keyword which I think is affordable connectivity that can really only be done if we leverage those existing operations around the world and that should really be focused not only on the lowest cost but it should be focused on driving coverage so here I'm for example highlighting the initiative that Brazil is doing in their latest spectrum auction they are combining the spectrum auction for 5G spectrum with actually a coverage requirement and that is something I think many countries around the world and national regulators should think of if you combine the two we are actually able to connect a large part of the unconnected around the world and I think that will be one of the basics for driving future education and honestly I don't think I think the teachers are the key I've always thought that and I'm a big fan of making sure we have strong teachers but I also think we need entrepreneurs I think entrepreneurs they might be teachers they might be something else but they are going to come up with new ways of learning new ways of training but whether it's children or adults but that type of tools that are going to come out of entrepreneurship I think is unbeatable and I'm willing to bet that large part of the world where we don't think today as leading in education could be for example in Africa might well develop the next type of application that's going to be the next way of training children because that's kind of skipping one generation I wouldn't rule that out but all of that hinges upon having connectivity thank you for that now we turn now to the commissioner you you mentioned and it goes with what Borja was saying whether you're a child or an adult we all need to continue learning minister Anderson also refer that in terms of teachers can you tell us how in the European commission you have organized yourselves around how these partnerships to promote learning throughout the life cycle and how we can learn from from this experience thank you Emiliana I would like just very briefly at the beginning to intervene on two important topic the first one is on innovation in education I think that it's really important not only to underline that there is a lot of different examples that already exist but to give them our recognition to give them more visibility and that's why I want to share with you that this week we announced the creation of our new European innovative teaching award and this time it's not for higher education it's from for early childhood and care primary school secondary and vocational education and training because we pay a lot of attention to higher education but we need really to see what's happened here at this important and crucial stage the second thing when we talk about teachers we all agree that new technologies will never replace teachers but new technologies in the good hands of our teachers can make miracles that's why at European level we decided to create European teacher academies we would like to create networks where there is an access for our teachers to trainings for their professional development but above all that's a huge opportunity to develop joint programs pedagogical materials because I fully agree with what was said we need to preserve the ecosystem approach to work with our teachers with our educators with our researchers and with our entrepreneurs on lifelong learning approach it's not easy it's not easy because there is a real change here the last few years I think that here I can give you one example it's very good to talk about re-skilling, cap-skilling other learning lifelong learning approach but if there is no recognition to the different trainings or courses that you are following that's very difficult to stay with motivation in this path that's why we are working on micro-credentials we would like to have a European approach on micro-credentials with recognition with interoperability with a lot of technical issues to address but that's exactly the aim to have more inclusive approach and to offer the possibility for adults or people that are active but they feel that there is a need to acquire new competencies to be sure that these competencies will be recognized and we'll give them more opportunities for a professional and personal development just one example thank you so much now I I believe strongly in the power of technology not only to influence teaching and learning but also what I call technology for beyond and really it's about how do you use it to recognize skills how do you use it to help bridge the information gaps between workers employers and students so that everybody can access the skills they need and so I'll turn to Tariq one last time we're running out of time and so we're going to have to come to a close soon but you you you refer to you know that the goal of education is to generate earnings and and of course that's that's one of the very important goals tell us about how Dubai Cares is supporting sort of the the use and the leveraging technology to improve sort of the and narrow the gap between skills and employment so we we Emeliana we do have a few programs that we use some of them are gadgets and some of them are huge technologies like in Ghana we had a program more than eight years ago and it's related to to the three probably points that was mentioned by the other panelists what we did in Ghana for instance we we wanted to train teachers in rural areas and and and and and those teachers are not able to come to the capital or to the main cities to get the training and and and and if they do they stay there they don't want to go back to the rural area and then the other problem features from the cities they don't want to go to the rural area in some countries like Laos we face a problem that they don't speak the native language they only speak the Lao language and even languages are creating problems so we we we worked to have a satellite model HUB schools with satellites so in each area you would have a school connected with satellite schools and and and and that HUB school six schools each school two teachers coming to the HUB school getting trained now how do you do the training all the professors are and and and and and in the capital in Akra so there's a base in Akra where there are two professors live streaming through broadcast not broadband broadcast and it's going there live it's a two-way communication and they're training the teachers so these are some of the gadgets that we're doing in Jordan we have a we have a master class application done by an American company which got awarded and and it's being used in America and mainstream education basically and it's approved by the ministry and you can get your MBA through it and and and we're doing that for the last two levels of high school so we're doing all of this and and and and we're trying to close that gap of people out of school and and and rural people not being able to go to school and one last point probably it's worth mentioning again I have to get some credit to the web working with the web on the closing the skills gap what what the web is also doing with countries they're mapping out the entire system on what are the existing jobs so if there are existing jobs in a country what are the necessary training that is needed to be done to get these jobs we should not do any training outside the existing jobs who dictates the future jobs it's the private sector so the private sector has to be in the game with the government creating these job descriptions and the future jobs and let's not forget the youth the youth have to be on the table because it's their future that we're talking about in a nutshell thank you so much and yes the youth and their voices are so important and that's why some of the initiatives that all of you are leading with with young people and involvement are so important I'm going to hand it over now to Saadia to give us closing remarks on behalf of web great thank you very much thank you Emiliana in January of 2020 the world economic forum launched a 10-year initiative called the reskilling revolution to reach a billion learners and workers with better education better skills and better jobs for the first year and a half we've had a very strong focus on adult retraining and reskilling especially with the devastation that was occurring across labor markets that is a focus that we will continue and we're very proud of the work that has been happening on that side of things however this is a very important global unique moment in which we can have a concerted effort around what we would call education 4.0 and that's very much the spirit of this session today and there are four things that we'd like to carry forward under that education 4.0 banner the first is to ensure that there is a coherent global taxonomy around skills for education 4.0 we developed one for the adult workforce we now aim to develop one with all of the partners on this call and others on education 4.0 for K through 12 learners the second area is an economic case for education 4.0 in the recovery there's been fantastic work done by many but we need to not only have that case but to ensure that policymakers who are taking the decisions around funding also have that case and have it very rapidly as countries think about various kind of stimuli over the coming year the third element is the closing the education gap accelerators again building upon a successful model that has existed for education for skills for gender we now want to take that forward and bring in at least eight countries into that model by 2023 and absolutely delighted to be working with minister Modsega of South Africa to be able to take that forward as the first founding country that is taking this model forward and finally the fourth area is a global education 4.0 alliance with both private sector leaders government leaders and international organization leaders as well as representatives of students and teachers to ensure that we are able to have this global approach one that uses this unique window of opportunity with that let me first thank again minister Modsega very much for being among the first to work with us in this model thank you so much to minister Anderson absolute privilege to have you and your country's long-standing experience be involved with the closing the education gap work and finally of course thank you to our very long-standing partners Atarik from Dubai Cares and Henrietta from UNICEF for their long-standing support for this topic and for all of the energy and support that they have brought to this work very privileged to have their support and finally of course thank you very much to Commissioner Gabriel and to Borges I do hope that with both of you this is an open invitation to have you join the education 4.0 alliance moving forward we absolutely need your commitment and drive moving forward as well finally last but not least thank you so much to Miliana for not just moderating today but also being a member of our global future council on education skills and learning thank you so much for all of your brilliant contributions thank you everyone privilege to have you here