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Indonesia must seize technology toward global education recovery via G20
The G20 Education Working Group needs to pull all the stops to ensure equal access to technology in education in creating truly global solutions that progressively address immediate challenges toward the future.
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Class of their own: An elementary school student (left) and her elder brother attend classes online from their home in Banda Aceh, Aceh, on Feb. 15, 2022. The local government suspended in-class learning due to a spike in COVID-19 cases. (Antara/Irwansyah Putra)
Indonesia’s Group of 20 presidency this year has given the world’s fourth largest nation a golden opportunity to demonstrate its international leadership, even though Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine may not only affect G20 meetings, but also divert the group’s attention from its original agenda.
With its overarching theme of “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”, Indonesia seeks to initiate meaningful discussion among the world’s 20 largest economies to bounce back from the slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The G20 Bali summit in October aims to address the pressing issues the world faces today, including in education.
The Education Working Group (EdWG), chaired by the Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry, has proposed four main priorities for discussions this year: universal quality of education, digital technology for education, solidarity and partnership, and the future of work post-COVID-19.
The pandemic has taken an enormous toll on the education sector and therefore, these priorities are crucial to supporting education recovery for not only Indonesia and G20 member states, but all countries around the world.
More than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed us to the structural inequality in education that has led to severe learning loss. It is predicted that learning loss will have serious consequences for the livelihood and wellbeing of future generations, even more so for those in the most vulnerable communities. As an impact of the pandemic, current students stand to lose up to US$17 trillion in lifetime earnings, according to the press release titled “Learning Losses from COVID-19” by the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF (December 2021). The loss could be even bigger if recovery efforts are not launched immediately and implemented properly.
Hence, the discussions at the EdWG meetings are essentially a race against time to fix education around the world before it worsens over time.
The pandemic also brought to light the crucial role of technology in education. Most education practitioners and experts have noted that this increased role of technology in education is here to stay.
