Private Sector Roundtable, Side Meeting
Generation Unlimited, Global Business Coalition for Education, Global Education Coalition, UN Global Compact
As the world is experiencing a global learning crisis leaving SDG 4 well off track, conventional education systems are struggling to deliver the values, knowledge, skills, and outlooks needed for children, young people, and adults. The role of the Private Sector is becoming more and more important as governments looks to transform their education systems.
Private Sector engagement in education and training already has a long tradition, including collaboration for work-based learning, digital learning, financing, research, and innovation. Private Sector involvement during the pandemic proved key in advancing solutions by sharing new methods and tools to address education challenges and brought significant contributions and results to education and to the creation and sustainability of local eco-systems. As the world emerges from the Covid-19 crisis, it is clearer now than ever that the Private Sector can play an important role in achieving SDG 4, and success requires multistakeholder partnerships between public and private sectors, civil societies, media, and academia.
This Round Table brought together a diverse range of Private Sector actors for an open discussion of what educational transformation looks like, how we could achieve this and contribution from the sector. The panel was moderated by Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO of the LEGO Foundation, in an open floor format, where quick-paced conversations could take place with three rounds of questions. All participants were encouraged and welcomed to take the floor and provide short responses in each round.
The overall ambition was explore the following questions:
- What does ‘Transforming Education’ look like to you, and what role should the Private Sector have?
- Looking at education today, to transform it, what should we keep and what should we discard or do differently?
- From your perspective, if there was one thing that could unlock education transformation what would it be?