It’s almost impossible to find a young person today who has not had their education impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. UNESCO estimates that 1.5 billion students and youth have been affected by school and university closures. Project Everyone’s Senior Campaign Manager, Kinvara Jardine Paterson, describes why this year, we all need to Reimagine Education.
The world was in a learning crisis before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has exacerbated and highlighted pervasive educational issues such as girls access to education, the digital divide in learning between those who can and cannot access the internet as well as children relying on school meals as a source of daily food and nutrition.
Today on International Day of Education, World’s Largest Lesson (WLL) in partnership with UNICEF and with the support of NetApp launches their 2022 learning theme with a spotlight on Global Goal 4 (Quality Education). Building on the work of UNICEF’s Reimagine Education initiative, WLL will be asking children to reflect on education. They’ll explore data to discover how it differs around the world and have classroom discussions about the purpose of education today. A gamified survey will enable them to share their views on what they think education should be like so that all children can reach their full potential.
As Professor Stephen Heppell says;
“There are 2.2 billion children in the world and no one is really asking them how they can make learning better. That’s a waste of opportunity. Given the number of children we’ve got and the circumstances of the world, it’s very hard to not see education being transformed by children rather than for children.”
With Global Goal 4 as one of the spotlight SDGs at this year’s HLPF as well as UN Secretary-General António Guterres calling for a Transforming Education Summit in September 2022, WLL aims to harness the power of student voice to help shape the global agenda on what education and learning could look like for children everywhere.
If you are interested in learning more, or want to partner with us as we build out our resources, please get in touch kinvara@project-everyone.org.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kinvara Jardine Paterson is Senior Campaign Manager at World’s Largest Lesson, Project Everyone.