By now, we’ve probably all heard at least one story of how a government, district, or school procured and distributed laptops or tablets to students on a massive scale and silently dropped the project altogether after a couple of years. If ICT can truly be “harnessed to strengthen education systems, knowledge dissemination, information access, quality and effective learning, and more effective service provision”, as stated in the Education 2030 Framework for Action, which was adopted by education leaders from all 193 Members States, why is this ICT-project-goes-nowhere scenario still happening?
ICT is not a magic bullet
Every country has different issues to address when it comes to strengthening education systems. Some face high dropout rates among girls in high school, while girls outperform boys in others. Some have packed classrooms of more than 100 students and only one teacher, while others have to deal with schools with fewer than 10 students. Some have limited funds to print textbooks, while others face difficulties delivering textbooks to remote areas. Social and cultural contexts must also be factored in. Put simply, the challenges countries face in achieving educational goals are as diverse as the nations themselves.
The failure of many large-scale ICT projects stems from underestimating the complexity of these issues and overestimating what ICT can do.
For example, if a country has a high dropout rate among girls and this can be attributed to a lack of toilets in schools, it’s a no-brainer that we should spend the precious and limited budget we have to build toilets rather than buy tablets. (More “bad practices in mobile learning” via the Edu Tech Blog).
Plan before acting
The first questions that should be asked before making a massive investment in ICT should be: Would ICT be the most cost-effective solution to mitigate the given education issues in your country, district, or schools? What are the education goals that ICT can/will help achieve? How will we know if the project is successful? (Instead of “should we buy laptops or tablets?”)
Introducing or integrating ICT in education to address pressing national education issues is neither cheap nor easy.
Unfortunately, many countries and planners still jump into an ICT solution, often driven by peer pressure (i.e. wanting to do something with ICT because a neighboring country has just started a one-laptop-per-child project). Without asking the necessary questions and having a shared understanding of the objectives ICT can achieve, this can be a recipe for another failed ICT project.
Once the decision is made to pursue an ICT initiative, more pragmatic matters come in: what resources are needed (and how can they be secured), who is going to implement and how will the progress be monitored?
In many countries, sustainable ICT integration in education requires a major financial and political commitment. Such planning is essential and, indeed, ICT-advanced countries, such as Singapore and Korea, have demonstrated the benefit of a five-year ICT in education master plan with a long-term vision to achieve.
This not only guides governments through the complex multi-sectoral implementation of the initiatives towards one common goal; it also helps them plan the mobilization of necessary resources.
UNESCO helps countries plan their ICT strategy
UNESCO’s ICT in Education Program assists Member States in developing ICT in education master plans.
With robust tools to analyze the current situation and root causes of education issues in a given country, UNESCO helps governments avoid carrying out piecemeal ICT projects and instead develop a comprehensive and costed master plan.
This master plan identifies the priority areas that ICT can best support, provides cost projections for necessary resources for the next five years, and guides the strategic implementation and monitoring of sustainable ICT-supported education.
With the support of UNESCO, the Government of Nepal launched its first national ICT in Education Master Plan 2013-2017, which pursues four priority areas: ICT infrastructure for schools; human resources (including teachers); digital learning materials; and education management information system (EMIS). UNESCO provided further assistance as part of the Master Plan implementation in reforming their ICT teacher training into a competency-based program.
Many countries have realigned their education sector plans to achieve the Education 2030 Agenda, which goes beyond basic education to ensure equitable and quality lifelong learning for all. Currently, UNESCO is supporting Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Sri Lanka in building their national strategies in using ICT to help achieve the Education 2030 targets.
Regional strategy for using ICT to help achieve Education 2030 (or SDG4)
As part of this effort, UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok) gathered education ministers and leaders from 46 Member States in Seoul in May 2017. They deliberated on a regional strategy for integrating ICT to help implement SDG4-aligned education sector plans.
Four priority areas were identified based on a regional survey:
- ICT for expanding relevant skills development in secondary education, TVET and higher education;
- ICT for improving the quality of teaching and teaching practices;
- ICT for enabling inclusion and equality in education;
- ICT for better monitoring and evaluation.
The Regional Strategy recommends six action points to promote more systematic and coordinated stakeholder engagement in pursuing the four priority areas. You can read the full text of the regional strategy and executive summary of the background research study.