Spain is committed to a balanced and safe digitization to achieve inclusive education – Virtual Educa News

The Secretary of State for Education, José Manuel Bar, today ratified Spain’s commitment to the United Nations call to action to guarantee and improve quality public digital learning for all. “It is time to extend the opportunities offered by digitization to the last corner, to the last school”, he underlined in his speech at the Summit for the Transformation of Education.

The objective of the United Nations with this summit is to mobilize action, ambition, solidarity and solutions with a view to transforming education by 2030. The Covid-19 pandemic has put the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals at risk and has delayed apprenticeships by an average of eight months.

In this context, the digital divide could exacerbate the existing imbalances and “leave many students behind, especially girls”, pointed out José Manuel Bar. For this reason, “it is essential that we attend to the elimination of this gap that will reduce opportunities to the most disadvantaged students, and that we do it with balance and protecting its users, especially if they are schoolchildren”, he added.

To this end, Spain has designed the Digitization and Digital Competencies Plan for the Educational System, in which it is going to invest almost 1,200 million euros in the coming years. This transformation goes hand in hand with the profound reform of the educational system in which our country is immersed, based on a competence model in which digital competence plays a central role.

“The path of digitization begins in schools, which must continue to fulfill their role as engines of social change, adapting to the times and protecting the universality of education. Our responsibility is to continue doing everything in our power to move towards a fair and inclusive digital transition, which leaves no male or female student behind”, concluded the Secretary of State.

As part of this commitment, Spain is going to host the Giga technology center, which will be in Barcelona. Over the next three years, the central government, the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council are going to invest 17.5 million euros in this initiative by UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to connect all schools in the world to the internet .

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, was in charge of opening this central day of the summit, which was attended by leaders from more than 80 countries, as well as ministers of education and other political leaders in the field of education and digitization. In addition, he has had the express support of activists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, actress and UNICEF ambassador Priyanka Chopra, and singer and UNICEF ambassador Angelique Kidjo.

Within the framework of this summit, the Secretary of State met with the Moroccan Minister of Education, Chakib Benmoussa, with whom he discussed various matters of common interest, such as teacher training, both Spanish and Moroccan, school sports and collaboration between educational centers of both countries. Precisely, the Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pilar Alegría, has sent a letter to the Minister of Morocco to advance on these and other issues at a forthcoming meeting in Madrid.