Jointly hosted by UNESCO and the Bangladesh government, a consultation meeting of Education Ministers of E9 countries was held virtually on April 6. Vice Minister of Education of China Zhong Denghua attended the event and gave a speech.
Zhong pointed out that China had been making a continuous effort to promote education informatization, a central pillar of education modernization. A set of measures have been taken: 1) Enhancing top-level design and formulating a series of policies to implement the country’s education informatization action plan 2.0; 2) Accelerating the popularization of access to the Internet in schools. Today, 100% of the schools in China have internet access, and 95.2% use multimedia in the classroom; 3) Setting up a national public service system for digital educational resources which was co-built by various stakeholders, helping children from remote areas and disabled children to gain equal access to high quality education via Internet; 4) Encouraging innovation in education and promoting information literacy among students, to provide more equitable, open and tailor-made education for everyone.
According to Zhong, after the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, nearly 300 million teachers and students engaged in online learning, making studying at home possible while the schools were shut down. China has joined hands with the international community in the fight against the pandemic, and shared with developing countries (including many African countries) a lot of experience and online educational resources.
Zhong stressed that the new round of technological and industrial revolution was shaping the world at a rapid pace, which heralded tremendous changes in the education sector. He said China was willing to put into place the principles of consultation, contribution and shared benefits, promote policy dialogue with other countries, and enhance exchanges and mutual-learning. Efforts would be made to implement measures put forward in the Qingdao Declaration on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education, the Beijing Consensus on Artificial Intelligence and Education and the Beijing Declaration on MOOC Development, to share educational technologies and resources, build up a shared community of digital education, and eventually achieve the education goals set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, and Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF’s Executive Director were present at the meeting. Attendees also include Ministers of Education of E9 countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan).
