Welcome to our first ever Generation Global issue! We are very excited to launch this newsletter to share with you exciting updates about new developments, events, news, and impact stories from the Generation Global community.
We started 2021 with many firsts - conducting our first workshop with educators in Indonesia on curriculum integration, launching a brand new topic on civic participation, and setting up our first cohort of student and teacher advisory groups. You can read about all this and other exciting things in this quarter's edition.
The Covid-19 pandemic has thrust teachers and students into the largest educational experiment the world has ever seen. The lockdowns have compelled teachers to embrace technology and challenged students to learn via Zoom, mobile phones, radio and television. Over 750 million girls and young women have been part of this global experiment and there is emerging evidence to suggest that this shift to online learning could be having a positive impact on girls' education.
The year 2020 will not be forgotten any time soon. For years to come, people around the world, of every age and from all walks of life, will remember the series of life-altering events that took place during these 12 months. For many, these incidents unfolded online and on social media: From our homes we have watched devastating wildfires in Australia and the Black Lives Matter movement that took the world by storm following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”
Pupils around the world have been impacted by lockdown – so offering a global platform for them to come together and learn could be key to helping them adapt. Almost 9 million children in England returned to schools this week. They join hundreds of millions of students globally who have either already returned to school or hope to soon. The priorities for schools will be markedly different this year owing to Covid-19 – regular handwashing, staggered lesson times, social distancing and restrictions on extracurricular activities will be the new norm.
COVID-19 is an educational crisis of a global nature never seen before. In just one month, 90% of all learners worldwide (more than 1.5 billion young people) saw their school or university close. As Medha, a Generation Global teacher in India, told us: “Because the lockdown was sudden, many students don’t have stationery and no books. They are panicking. I feel the school buildings are closed but the staff is working more than ever to continue the teaching-learning process. After the shutdown, we were not equipped.”
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.
In the twenty-five years since World Teachers’ Day was launched, violent extremism has gone from a fringe problem to one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. Security measures will always be vital but defeating this threat requires a generational struggle against the ideas that underpin the violence. A comprehensive, multifaceted strategy is needed with Education at the heart of it. That’s why on World Teachers’ Day this year, we’re calling on governments and the global education community to root out religious prejudice and promote tolerance throughout their education systems.
