Education systems around the world should use the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to constructively build for the future and focus on “resilience, innovation, and social cohesion”, an online conference organised by Qatar Foundation’s global education think tank has heard.
The virtual gathering held by the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), in partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar, saw education experts from around the world share their experiences and insights on the responses of their schools, universities, and organisations to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Titled 'Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined', the two-day conference has featured sessions designed to provide better understanding of the challenges education systems are currently facing, and be a platform for exchanging ideas and practices across different education systems on short- and mediumterm responses to the disruption caused by the pandemic.
It has also aimed to spark a global conversation on how education can be shaped and refined to adapt when a “new normal” emerges. Speaking about global education’s response to coronavirus and the next steps in its approach to facing the crisis, Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, said: “We are all in the early stage of the COVID-19 crisis and, amid this situation, we definitely need to think anew.
“There are several key factors in helping us to fight this battle and move to the next steps, starting with resilience. We must build our futures around resilience, both for our education systems and for the individuals within them.
“The next is innovation – it’s no longer optional; it has to become a core competency in order to move forward. Finally, there is social cohesion, because we cannot flourish in isolation. Humanity’s greatest evolutionary advantage has been its ability to collaborate flexibly in very large numbers across time and place.
Our future must include active steps to bring the world together politically, culturally, socially, and economically.” Dr. Gregory Moncada, Director of Qatar Academy for Science and Technology (QAST) – part of Qatar Foundation’s Pre-University Education – explained the practical steps that the school took in response to the pandemic, and said, “As a practitioner in the field of education for about 25 years, and from force major events which I have faced, the main point I would make is that you can never be ready, but you can be current.
“We also communicated with parents and gave them notice about the possibility of shifting to online learning. By helping them anticipate the next steps, it made the transition much smoother.”
