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Avoiding a COVID-19 lost generation will require radical transformation in education, shored up financing and innovation across the board, asserted leaders at a dedicated side-event of the UN High Level Political Forum, “Education Post-COVID 19,” on 9 July 2020.

The event was organized by UNESCO and the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee, with support from the Group of Friends for Education and Lifelong Learning.

“Our first estimates find that 20 million students are at risk of not returning to school. Without the right policy choices backed up by resources, the learning crisis will deepen with cascading repercussions across all the development goals,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education. “No society can afford this. This is a time to recommit to education, better and differently, reaching beyond our circles”.

Ringing the alarm on the largest shock to education in history, World Bank’s Global Director for Education Jaime Saavedra announced “the joint multi-partner global #SaveOurFuture campaign which aims to reimagine education in the post COVID world and engage people in a dialogue around education to build back better for the world’s children and youth.”

“We have to campaign because we cannot afford for education to be the loser,” said Gordon Brown, United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, referring to reduced tax revenue, falling aid and pressures to spend on health and social safety nets. “We need a build back better agenda for safe schools, connected schools and high technology schools and community support.

Education is a component of social inclusion with teachers at its heart

“Real changes often happen in deep crisis – we cannot return to the status quo. The future of education is the future of our societies,” said Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education, OECD, and moderator of the event. “We have a once in a generation opportunity to reopen schools better and differently,” echoed Robert Jenkins, UNICEF’s Global Chief of Education. “Teachers must be at the heart of this transformation and there have been amazing examples of resilience and creativity throughout the pandemic,” he said.  

Regretting that many countries have failed to sufficiently involve teachers in the response to the pandemic, Haldis Holst, Education International’s Deputy General Secretary, called on governments to “trust the professionalism of teachers and prioritize social dialogue with teachers and unions. Equity needs to be a priority.”

This dimension was stressed by Maria Victoria Angulo Gonzalez, Minister of National Education of Colombia and her country’s representative on the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee. She explained her government’s efforts to promote inclusion at all levels, including through nutrition programmes, strengthened socio-emotional support for students and teachers and financial aid for higher education students. Priorities are to reduce dropout rates, understand gaps in the learning process, and accelerate the digital transformation as part of the new reality of education.

The Profoturo Foundation, a member of UNESCO’s , is dedicated to narrowing the digital divide in education. Its Chief Executive Officer, Magdalena Brier, touched upon a range of programmes to build the capacities of governments, train teachers and reach vulnerable populations, affirming that the crisis has “taught us to reinvent ourselves and think in innovative ways”’. 

Providing a youth perspective, Anna Prokopenya, 2015 WorldSkills Champion, concentrated on how education should strengthen students’ agency. She put three questions to the education leaders:  “Firstly, how can we make sure that practical learning is included in the new process? Secondly, how can the system become more flexible to consider and cultivate each student’s personality? Thirdly, in a reality with endless amount of information, how can education lead and show the way for self-motivated learning?”

Rasheda K. Choudhury, Executive Director of CAMPE and Representative for the Collective Consultation of NGOs to the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee advocating for civil society, teachers, students, and parents said, “We must continue to work for those farthest behind and continue to strive for ensuring the right to education for all. SDG 4 is the door to achieving other SDGs and inclusion is the key to that door.”

A recessionary outlook 

Expressing concern that the financial crisis could reverse two decades of gains in education, especially for girls, the Group of Friends for Lifelong Learning represented by Ambassador Mona Juul, President of ECOSOC and Norway’s Permanent Representative to the UN, called for engaged leadership and coordination action. “We have to seize the momentum to safeguard international and domestic investment in education as a prerequisite for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and to foster the will to place education at the heart of recovery plans,” she said.

Manos Antoninis, Director of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, warned that COVID-19 ‘adds another layer of complexity to an already challenging situation” in terms of funding.  He said that the SDG 4 financing gap could increase by one-third but investments in education now could save up to two-thirds of these costs by 2030. Special Envoy Gordon Brown evoked funding solutions such as conditional cash transfers, debt relief, creation of new resources by the International Monetary Fund and increased lending by the World Bank.

Special focus was placed on Africa by Kenya’s Ambassador to the UN, Lazarus Ombai Amayo, co-chair of the Group of Friends. Noting that the continent accounts for 35% of the global student population, he stressed the need for all children to get back to school and called for increased regional cooperation. “The most vulnerable struggling to adapt. It should be the reverse - our education systems should adapt to needs of the most marginalized,” he said.

“SDG 4 is being tested like never before,” said Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, calling for debt restructuring, stepped up donor support, more efficiency in spending and national investment in education as the best way to face an uncertain future. “There’s a clear desire to transform how education systems deliver. We need to figure out where the gaps are and invest in the resilience of education systems.”

Concluding the event, Stefania Giannini asserted that “the last couple of months have seen us unite and cooperate in new ways, innovative ways. Only through working together and partnerships will we be able to build back better, and every partner has a role to play.”