The Covid-19 pandemic has surfaced many social inequalities that we knew existed in our societies. For the education sector, these include deep disparities in environments conducive to effective at-home learning and inequities in access to technology. An OECD report released yesterday, which surveyed 59 countries’ responses to Covid-related school closures, reveals that only half of students have been able to access all or most of the curriculum through remote learning materials during lockdown.
At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we are redirecting our efforts globally to support the fight against Coronavirus.
Our education programme, Generation Global, is offering existing students a safe space to interact with their global peers using our resources and online student dialogue forum. At the same time, we are hosting virtual dialogue circles for teachers across all the regions we operate in.
To help build young people’s resilience to hate speech, our dialogue education programme, Generation Global, works with experts to produce briefing notes to help teachers understand narratives of hate. We have just launched two new ones – on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Muslim Hate. Knowing the themes that underpin these narratives means that teachers are better prepared to recognise them amongst students, when supporting them remotely and in school, and can feel confident to challenge them.
At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we are redirecting our efforts globally to support the fight against Coronavirus.
Our education programme, Generation Global, is offering existing students a safe space to interact with their global peers using our resources and online student dialogue forum. At the same time, we are hosting virtual dialogue circles for teachers across all the regions we operate in.
The award of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in Economics to the pioneer “Randomistas” as they have come to be known, has been pre-dated by deliberations for, against and balanced on the merits of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs). Here in Liberia, the tool has been central to an exciting, and controversial, education policy reform, which I’ve been working with the government on for the past 2 years. It is now time to reflect on a final RCT evaluation of the policy reform instituted by government, launched publicly in December 2019.
The world is divided in many dimensions today. Rich and poor. East and West. North and South. Divisions of culture, identity and faith. Some people are frightened of globalisation. Others welcome it. Some see diversity of population and society as a strength, while others see it as a threat to traditional ways of life and thinking. Yet one thing stands out. The future belongs to the open-minded. Globalisation is driven by people –through technology, through travel, through the possibility of migration.
Cleo Blackman
