On Tuesday 18 April, the European Commission proposed two EU Council recommendations to boost digital skills in the Union. This ‘digital education’ package aims to create the necessary conditions for this learning as well as to tackle areas where Europeans lack knowledge.
Indeed, only 54% of European citizens have basic digital skills and, despite the demand from employers, the EU has only 9 million digital specialists. However, “in the Digital Compass, we have set ourselves the target that, by 2030, at least 80% of all adults should have basic digital skills and we should have 20 million new ICT specialists”, said Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager.
While Member States have spent almost €23 billion on digital education and €16.5 billion on improving connectivity in their recovery plans, these recommendations aim to “accelerate” and encourage governments to “be more audacious” in their implementation, summarised Education Commissioner Mariya Gabriel.
Strengthening factors for success
The first recommendation relates to “the key enabling factors” for the success of digital education. The aim here is to establish a favourable learning environment and to ensure universal access to quality training, so as to ultimately reduce the digital divide.
The Commission therefore calls on EU countries to create a “coherent framework of investment, governance and teacher training for effective and inclusive digital education”. While some Member States already have a single national strategy on the subject, “we still lack regular monitoring to be able to fill the gaps”, Ms Gabriel lamented.
The text also proposes guidelines for the EU27 to implement a “whole-of-government” and multi-stakeholder approach. In concrete terms, this means that digital education should not be the sole responsibility of ministers of education, but should involve several ministries and levels of government. Similarly, “Member States are showing increasing interest in setting up public-private partnerships, including with the education technology sector (‘ed tech’)”, Ms Gabriel welcomed.
The Commissioner also stressed the need for adequate and functional computer equipment and fast internet connection in educational institutions. Similarly, all teachers should have access to digital upgrading programmes. “Here, I am banking on one of the novelties of the Erasmus+ programme, which are the Teacher Academies”, she added (see EUROPE 12622/27).
The recommendation: https://aeur.eu/f/6d7
Improving education
The second recommendation aims at “improving the provision of digital skills in education and training”.
While it covers all levels of education, it calls on Member States to “start early” with “a consistent approach to the provision of digital skills”, for example, by setting progressive targets or promoting targeted interventions for “priority or hard-to-reach groups”.
While the skills taught need to be age and audience specific, “every country should run a detailed analysis of its current workforce to identify the main digital skills gaps and deliver specific training”, Ms Vestager added.
The text also calls for computer science to become an essential part of the curriculum at all levels. EU countries should therefore adopt “cross-curricular approaches at all levels of education. That means that we need to integrate digital skills in every subject that is taught at school, as well as being a separate subject on its own”, said Ms Vestager.
Furthermore, the Commission encourages EU countries to mainstream the development of digital skills among adults and to address shortages in IT-related occupations through inclusive strategies.
The recommendation: https://aeur.eu/f/6d8
A European Digital Skills Certificate
Finally, these recommendations, the Commissioners stressed, should help to reduce the disparities in digital skills between Member States. “The Commission’s role will be to facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges and disseminate good practices”, added Ms Vestager. In particular, the institution intends to set up a new High-Level Group on digital education and skills.
Beyond the recommendations and with the automatic recognition of skills being one of the priorities of the European Education Area (see EUROPE 13157/22), the Commission has launched, in parallel, a pilot project for a European Digital Skills Certificate. By building trust between education systems, it should, in turn, help to reduce the differences in digital literacy across the EU. Its feasibility will be assessed at the end of 2023 and its final version implemented in 2024. (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)