Concept note Education event, leading to AU-EU summit “Building skills for the future”

Context: Even before COVID-19, we were facing a learning crisis, with more than half of all ten-year-olds in low- to middle-income countries unable to read a simple story, and adolescents not learning the transferable, digital, entrepreneurial, and job-specific skills to prepare them for the jobs of the future and to engage with their communities. The effects of ongoing conflicts and crises have also hampered efforts to get all children into learning, with disproportionate effects on girls and displaced children.

Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to education globally, with more than 1.57 billion students affected in recent months by nationwide school closures, in more than 190 countries. The pandemic has shone a light on deep inequalities in access to education, learning outcomes and digital connectivity, and exposed weaknesses in education systems, including inadequate water and sanitation in many schools. After months into the pandemic, these gaps have further widened, making existing inequalities more profound and difficult to revert. The poorest and most vulnerable, such as refugees, those living in conflict, girls and children with disabilities are most at risk of never returning back to education.

In Africa COVID-19 has disrupted the landscape of education by limiting how students can access learning. This left over 20 million learners out of school at pre-primary level, 160 million at primary, 56 million at secondary, and 8 million at tertiary level, with no access to continued learning and teaching facilities across the continent. The Specialised Technical Committee on Education, Science and Technology (STC-EST 3) of the African Union, held its Virtual Extraordinary session on 30 April 2020 to address pressing challenges that have been created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the key recommendations of Ministers was the need for AU Member States to take advantage of the opportunity for online teaching and learning to ensure continuity of education on the continent; improvement of education systems and robust e-learning infrastructure; ensuring quality and integrating lessons learnt and good practices.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and its negative impact on Africa’s education systems is calling on all education stakeholders at global, continental, and country levels to come together to act with speed and at scale to implement innovative initiatives that improve the resilience of Africa’s education system and ensures continuous learning. There is a need to innovate education development, provision and delivery, taking advantage of the digital revolution. As the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25) states, ICT is a major tool for ensuring universal access, quality of provision and delivery, and empowerment of school graduates for meaningful personal lives, and contribution to social economic development. The African Union DOTSS1 framework offers an integrated approach to transforming Africa’s education systems allowing Member States to reach every child to learn – whether in a crisis such as COVID-19, or in reaching the most marginalized children with quality and relevant education.

1 DOTSS is an acronym for Digital connectivity, Online and offline learning, Teachers as facilitators and motivators of learning, Safety online and offline, Skills focused learning

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reopen schools better than they were before and to make sure children and youth are learning and acquiring the skills and competences they need for life in the 21st century. This means adopting a lifelong learning approach by building skills at the appropriate age level, starting from the foundational level (basic literacy and numeracy) into the more complex skills such as digital skills, entrepreneurship and socio-emotional competences. This also means focusing on early education, to basic education, and later to higher education and/or vocational educational training. The priorities are therefore the following:

● Bring the most vulnerable children (back) to education and reach the ones out of school or having dropped out; promote inclusive education; ● Put in place adequate learning catch-up strategies to enable students to recover from the education losses and for out of school children and youth to acquire basic skills; ● Improve the quality of teaching and empower Teachers with pedagogical practices conducive to children active learning; ● Strengthen education systems by integrating the development of skills for life in the 21st century, including digital skills and digital literacy; ● Meet the holistic needs of children and youth, including nutrition, physical and mental health, emotional well-being and protection; ● Improve the resilience of education systems to shocks and crises; and ● Tackle inequalities and promote peace.

Education will be a strong pillar of the new Africa-EU Strategy. The timing is therefore an opportunity to put into concrete action the ambition to address the pressing needs of education and skills development in Africa, in line with the commitments taken forward by CESA (2016-2025) and the transformative agenda set out in the DOTSS approach.

Main objectives of the event: The overall objective of the event will be to anchor education at the heart of the Africa-EU Strategy, and the trilateral AU-EU-UNICEF partnership and commit to invest in the priority areas of: access to quality education for all, including higher education and vocational training; equity and inclusion (leaving no child behind), and teaching and learning of skills and competences that respond to the needs of local economies and life in the 21st century. Specifically it will address the following themes:

- Propose a lifelong learning approach to education, as one of the most effective approaches to ensure girls’ and boys’ rights and needs are recognised and realised in a gender-responsive and age- appropriate way, and as an effective way to respond to the severe impact of Covid-19 in education;

- Discuss pathways to reimagine learning in line with the African Union’s CESA 16-25 and Agenda 2063, and propose ways to integrate these aspects in the future collaborations;

- Reinforce the partnerships and the multi-stakeholder commitments to support education in Africa, between AU, EU, EU Member States, UN, civil society, private sector, global education partners (Global Partnership for Education, Education Cannot Wait, etc.) and others interested to engage.

Proposed Agenda: - Introduction by the HRVP Borrell and ED Henriette Fore of UNICEF

- Keynote speeches by: o EU Commissioner Urplainen (incl. announcement of decision to spend 10% of EU cooperation on education) and; o AU Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology, H.E. Prof Sarah Anyang Agbor. - Panel discussion moderated by a youth representative with: o AU Minister (H.E. Dr. Tumwesigye Elioda, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Chair of the STC-EST 3) o Minister of the Portuguese EU Presidency o ADG Giannini, UNESCO o Representative of civil society organization o Representative of private sector o Testimonies from a Teacher(s) o Testimonies from Students - U-Report Ambassador presenting the report (focus on education and skills) - Q&A (questions aligned to main topics: lifelong learning, digitalisation and partnerships to be asked by youth) - Conclusion by AU Commissioner Agbor and EU Commissioner Lenarcic

Format: - Webinar (90 to 120 minutes): to be interactive and dynamic (videos will be used as separator of speeches and key notes) - Panelists will have maximum 5 minutes for interventions - The audience should consist of stakeholders (private and public) covering the 5 strategic priorities (green deal, digital jobs and growth, peace and security, governance, migration,) and education representatives (African and EU networks, teachers, civil society incl youth organisations, think tanks, universities/researchers, economists, Erasmus alumni from Africa, global education actors)

Timing

- Week of 19 April 2021 (19 or 20)