Education

Digital Pathways for Education: Enabling Greater Impact for All

The world is facing a longstanding global learning and skills crisis. Over half of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text, and 87 percent of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2024, 251 million children and young people were out of school, and as of 2023, 468 million lived in a conflict zone (UNESCO UIS). Two thirds of school age children (approx. 1.3 billion globally) do not have access to the internet at home. Skills mismatches are increasingly evident in a highly dynamic labour market.

Concurrently, digital technologies are permeating education at unprecedented speed and scale. The possibilities of using digital solutions to enhance teaching and learning, and to revolutionise educational processes are attractive. At the same time, the related systemic investment needs are substantial, evidence of effectiveness is scarce, and risks abound. Policymakers face formidable, multi-faceted opportunities and challenges in designing and implementing digitally enabled education services at scale.

In this state of play, how can countries leverage digital solutions to build equitable, relevant, and resilient education systems with a positive impact on learning outcomes?

What can policymakers do to leverage digital solutions for better learning outcomes?

Keep a steady focus on the vision of providing equitable, relevant, and resilient learning for all.
Recognise that each country’s unique contextual conditions and vision for its economy and society will drive its digital pathways for education and skills development.
Play a strategic and hands-on role in shaping evidence-based policies that drive the integration of digital technologies in education.
Recognize and support the role of teachers as cultivators, coaches and critical pedagogues to help students build the 21^st century skills required to survive and thrive in the digital era
Tailor digital pathways – deliberately consider and fine-tune strategies and policies which address the diverse and dynamic needs within each specific country context.
Proactively tackle the inherent trade-offs when taking decisions on digital investments.

Figure 1: Potential Digital Pathways for Equitable, Relevant and Resilient Education Systems

How can countries make a digital transition in education?

Policymakers, the private sector, civil society, and academia can use the following architecture as a framework to think through their country’s digital transition in education and define their unique trajectory.

Overall, digital pathways in education and skills development can be seen as the interplay of two dimensions: (1) depth of digital transitions, the extent to which public policy efforts take a systemic approach in the strategic governance, infrastructure, policy design, and government-level implementation and (2) scale of digital transitions, the extent to which digital transitions are supported by strong and learning-centred private markets, research and innovation ecosystems.

Figure 2: Enabling Architecture for the Digital Transition of Education Systems