And here I
want to highlight all citizens, because education concerns us all.
The European
framework for digital competence divides the knowledge, skills and
attitudes that all citizens need into five areas:
1.
Information and data literacy;
2.
Communication and collaboration;
3. Digital
content creation;
4. Safety;
5. Problem
solving.
The current
COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how important the digital skills (both basic and advanced) have become to our
economy and society, by allowing work to continue or by tracking the spread of the virus in our country.
Digital will
also play a key role in the economic recovery that Luxembourg, like all the other
countries is preparing.
As you
probably know, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is located in the center of Europe
and was one of the founding members of the European Union. Our neighbours are Belgium,
France and Germany and about 160.000 people from these 3 countries pass the
borders every day (in normal circumstances) to come to work in Luxembourg.
In addition
to English, which is widely spoken, we have three official languages:
Luxembourgish, French and German.
These details
are important because Luxembourg's strategies in a lot of areas, including
education, need to take into consideration the diversity of our work force, human
resources available in the region for our labour market, the educational
initiatives put into place by our neighbours, including those related to
digital skills and education, data protection but also health & social
security.
In 2014, the
Luxembourg government launched its flagship initiative, the ‘Digital Luxembourg’,
to support the state’s transition towards a digital society and economy = a
partnership between the government and more than 109 public and private actors
of the digital ecosystem.
The main
focus areas of Digital Lëtzebuerg cover:
• ICT
infrastructures;
• support for
innovation and access to financing for start-ups;
• 'FinTech';
• e-skills;
•
e-administration;
• Promotion
of Luxembourg.
In the
context of our presentation, we are focused on e-skills. As mentioned earlier,
digital competences need to be developed throughout the entire life. In
addition, unemployment among low-skilled workers is relatively high in
Luxembourg, which illustrates the challenges in the education and vocational
training that we still have to face.
Luxembourg is one of the 18 European education systems
that have a specific strategy devoted to digital education. The Digital4Education
strategy was introduced in 2015 by Luxembourg’s Minister of Education, Childhood
& Youth. Its objective is to
educate young people in digital media, as well as to teach them through digital
media. Its mission is to prepare young people for a professional landscape of
rapid & permanent change. Because indeed, in order to be fit for the 21st
century, young people need to develop certain skills & know-how in line
with the development of our society and economy.
The strategy is structured around 5 axes and encompasses a broad
portfolio of programs reflecting the diversity of opportunities offered by the
growing ICT sector in our country:
1)
Digital citizen (e-Health, unique ID, e-Banking,
e-Card)
2)
Digital peer (Bee secure, Bee
balanced, Bee fair, Safer internet, Cyberbully, Sexting)
The young people are prepared to use digital
technologies efectively and safely – they are made aware of the risks of
cyber-bullying, internet addiction or the loss of privacy, potential misuse of
personal data, web-tracking, spreading of fake news.... I hope somethinh
similar will be put in place for the elderly…
3) Digital learner (EDUsphere,
MathemaTIC, Digital textbook, e-library)
4) Digital worker (Digital classroom,
Mobile learning – the tabletsclasses) and
5) Digital entrepreneur (Bee creative) The Bee Creative program, launched as part of this overarching
strategy, specifically focuses on improving the digital skills of young people
in Luxembourg & building a digital culture, including via the introduction
of makerspaces within schools. This unprecedented accessibility to high-tech
tools takes the notion of educational resources to a new level.
As you can easily notice,
Luxembourg’s strategy includes quite a lot of innovative educational projects aimed
at bringing the digital technology to the youth, a strategy that should inspire
future ICT experts & entrepreneurs. But how to check the
progress or success of its strategy implementation? How to identify the reasons for
successes and failures in translating the policy into practice? For example, in my opinion, the
current national strategy forgot to consider also the needs for digital skills
of the senior citizens, who are struggling with the basic use of e-banking,
e-card etc.
It is
extremely important to be aware that the implementation process can take
several years. If we look at
Luxembourg’s strategy for digital education but also at other different
European countries, we notice that many national strategies in digital
education are very recent, so it is a bit too early to measure the progress
towards achieving the strategic objectives.
On top of
everything, in Luxembourg (+ half of the European countries) there are no monitoring
or evaluation procedures in place. In Luxembourg
(+ France), objectives related to digital education have to be included in the
general school development plan (which is established at the national level). In this context, I’d like to mention a best
practice that it’s worth learning from and get inspired by: the National
Digital Strategy of Romania has a monitoring element which is the
responsibility of the Ministry of Communication and Information Society. The
methodology, as well as quantitative and qualitative indicators, have been
specified in a Manual for Monitoring and Evaluation of the National
Digital Strategy published in Jan 2016. It is a quite impressive quality
management tool, I must say, especially for someone like me with a Master degree in Quality management.
Coming back to Luxembourg, despite the absence of
regulations, indicators or monitoring methodology, all public schools are
supported in developing digital education. This is done through investment in
IT infrastructure, requirements for school digital plans, digital leadership in
school (school heads and digital coordinators), parental involvement,
availability and quality of digital learning resources.
One last relevant point I would like to mention before I conclude is the
involvement of parents.
Involving and supporting parents in digital education
is essential for the development of student digital competences. Because young
people spend more time on internet activities outside school than in school,
which means that parents have an important role in encouraging their children
to become critical and confident users of technology.
Very rarely is the parental involvement featured among
the main objectives of the European countries’ digital education strategies.
A best practice can be found in France where a
practical guide for parents on the use of digital technologies has been
developed. Guide La famille tout écran – excellent tool.
In Luxembourg, the parents are informed / consulted
via the associations of parents and since 2019 via the newly created National association of
parents, which hopefully will help in the future with the
communication flow between schools and families.
After the general elections in October 2018,
Luxembourg created a new Ministry of Digitisation. The Ministry is headed by
the Prime Minister, Xavier Bettel, and is in charge of all issues linked to digitisation.
The Ministry coordinates initiatives developed by other Ministries and other
partners in the field of digitisation and e-Government.
In conclusion, the best is yet to come and Luxembourg is "making it happen".
According to
the 2020 Digital Economy and Society Index issued by the European Commission
every year since 2014, Luxembourg ranks 10th out of 28 EU Member states.
Luxembourg
continues to implement a range of strategies and initiatives to boost the
digital skills of its population and to attract and retain talent, to address
the significant digital skills gap on the labour market. Relevant examples are the Digital4Education strategy, the inclusion of coding in the education curricula of cycle 4 of the fundamental education programme which has been very criticized this week by the teachers' syndicates, or the Artificial
Intelligence (AI) strategy that includes measures to boost advanced digital
skills.
To be continued...
