We’re thrilled to announce that World’s Largest Lesson – an initiative led by Project Everyone and UNICEF – today launches a global gamified survey inviting children and young people to share their views on the current state of education and how it can be transformed to meet the needs of today’s school children.
Lack of resources, poor quality teaching and materials, outdated curricula, and more than two years of education disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has created the perfect storm for a global learning crisis. A predicted 70 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 – a marker for minimum literacy proficiency, up from 57 percent pre-pandemic.
To address this, education systems must be reformed, and children and young people must be consulted in the development of education policy plans.
The World’s Largest Lesson survey created with the support of NetApp, a cloud-led, data-centric software company, will help provide governments with the data they need to do this.
In response to the global learning crisis, the United Nations is hosting the Transforming Education Summit in New York on 19th September 2022 and is asking governments to include children and young people on an ongoing basis in their education policy plans.
Alongside the summit, World’s Largest Lesson and NetApp are inviting students to present their ideas for the transformation of education to a group of business, education, and policy leaders at Goals House on Monday 19th September in New York. The ideas presented will then be shared with other children to encourage them to develop and share their own innovations for education.
“Data has become a critical resource for driving digital transformation in our interconnected world,” said George Kurian, NetApp, Chief Executive Officer. “At NetApp, we believe in empowering the next generation with the data science skills to build the future. This year, through our Data Explorers program, we are proud to support the World’s Largest Lesson, a program of Project Everyone, working in partnership with UNICEF and with the support of UNESCO. Together with the World’s Largest Lesson, we seek to prepare today’s young people to unlock the full potential of data and make a difference in tomorrow’s world.”
The survey is one element of our work at World’s Largest Lesson this year. There are many other ways for children to become education activists for SDG4. Whether this is using learning crisis data to spark their action or teaching their own lessons at school on World Children’s Day (20th November).
You can find all the learning resources here.
About the author
This blog was written by Kinvara Jardine Paterson, Programme Director at World’s Largest Lesson.