who values youth's sustainability most - start of a zoom world tour scotland gordon brown korea ...

 rough transcript gordon brown - korea global leaders forum nov 2020 -extended tour notes here

00:01 i'm delighted to join you at this eighth global leadership forum and i congratulate you on choosing as this year's theme the biggest question of our time

00:12 what will our post-covid world look like?

 

 and i want to start by thanking all those who contributed to the organization of this  important event and in particular the leader who asked me to speak to you my friend professor lee whose distinguished career has included his great success in reforming education in the republic of korea as minister of education science and technology and his path-breaking work on the global and korean education commissions that i had the privilege to chair

00:37 and who as an academic and writer is recognized and admired for his innovative research and insights especially in HTHT: High-Tech High-Touch education, admired not just in this continent but in every continent --now this conference meets at the right time because we're indeed at an inflection point

 

00:53 covid 19 this microscopic parasite 10000 times smaller than a grain of salt has not only infected 50 million people( ed some models of asymptomatics figure nearer 500 million) 

-and destroyed more than a million lives, but it has made us as individuals come face to face with our own vulnerability- and indeed our mortality

01:10 and it has brought more economic havoc, disrupted more trade, killed off more jobs, led to more lost production, caused more company closures than has any modern recession

01:20 And it has not only  undermined the cultural and social foundations of our lives but it is making us rethink the way we live, the way we work, the way we travel. the way we learn the way we study

01:31 in some cases it is accelerating already underway changes: like the online economy…in other cases exposing age-old problems like poverty and deprivation which have come to the surface and in other cases making what previously seemed impossible 

-- work is changing as more people work from home and  communicate online the consumer economy is changing as retail moves online

 

01:55 public services are changing as we see online education and online health dramatically expand

 

02:01 the social contract is changing as we reframe the rights and responsibilities of individuals and governments 

 

our ideas of fairness are changing as we recognize we will have to do more to value and reward all those who have been underpaid and under recognized ;especially those running personal one-to-one face-to-face

services like social care where some of the lowest paid workers in the world have had to take some of the biggest risks and the jobs we do are changing as IT , logistics, the digital economy as well as social care have to expand to meet new needs- 

 

our ideas of what is acceptable are changing as workers who have been prepared to  be self-employed (without job/health/pension contracts) now seek greater security- 

our idea of society is changing but people have been isolated now more than ever that being part of a community matters more to them than ever it did

 

 02.58 and so each country will have to find its own way forward as it rebalances the relationships 

• between individuals and communities 
• between markets and states, 
• between risk and security, 
• between freedom and control; .
• between the very rich and the rest and of course between man and nature

03:08

and education is changing; and this is where i want to focus the rest of my remarks

indeed i want to suggest today that because we are now more aware than ever of inequality of families and children denied opportunity- of the vast gap between the world's education rich and the education poor, 

 

there is now no route to the future that does not have education at its center, no route to greater equality of opportunity that does not involve education

03:35 no route to more prosperous economies, stronger communities and fairer societies without investing in education, no route to rebuilding our countries too -

03:44 no route to building back better without the contribution of education of teachers, trainers, researchers, academics to the common good

 

04.00  -so for all these reasons, i have to say to you that the pandemic has robbed millions of children of the future

because the education they once enjoyed has been interrupted- many of whom may never return to school, or even if they do they may never catch up on their learning

04:08 you know at the height of the pandemic 1.6 billion children and young people- 90 percent of the world's pupils and students had their education disrupted-nearly a billion students are still shut out from schools today

and the risk is that short-term school closures will lead to long-term reversals in educational attainment with the opportunities available to the world's poorest and most marginalised children already diminished and hit even more

 

04:34 before the pandemic

 let us remember 260 million school-age children did not go to school, 

400 million children left education at 11 or 12 never to return, 

800 million half the developing world's children left  education without any usable qualifications for the workplace

 

 and that while the numbers of graduates (from high school) has increased from 100 million 50 years ago to 400 million in 2 000 to 700 million now ..even in the 2040s when children born today will first come of age 70% of all the adult population of the world will never have the secondary nor college nor university qualifications needed for the well-paying jobs the world can offer

 

 05:20 in low-income countries today a staggering 90 percent of children are in learning poverty which means they cannot read a basic text by the age of 10;now in the last financial crisis the typical child fell six months behind in their educational attainments . but children who are out of school for more than a year are even more unlikely even to return, 

 

and in crisis settings,

girls are two and a half times more likely to drop out of school than boys; but missing out on school means millions of children also go hungry; indeed during this pandemic 370 million children have been missing out on free or subsidized school meals which have often been their only regular source of nourishment

06:01 and with families under extreme financial pressure millions of boys and girls may soon join the 152 million children already forced into child labour

06:11 and many girls will join the 12 million girls a year who are forced into becoming child brides

06.21 with one estimate suggesting this illiteracy could lose us as a society as much as 10 Trillion dollars per year in future earnings we are standing by doing too little as havoc is reaped by one of the biggest forces accelerating inequality in our generation

 06:35 quality education is vital to lift people out of poverty; to ensure healthier families advance racial and gender equality, unlock job opportunities increase security

06:45 and create a more just peaceful and sustainable world- and girls education is a proven link to lowering fertility rates and reducing population growth which itself is one of the key drivers of climate change

06:56 education especially of girls leads to better health- a child whose mother can read is

·          fifty percent more likely to live past the age of five

·         fifty percent more likely to be immunized twice as likely to attend school

07:09

and so this is why we must come together as a global community and save the future of our children in response to this crisis

07:18

the education commission in partnership with an unprecedented global coalition of international organizations launched save our future to call for urgent investigation in education to prevent what we call the generational catastrophe

07:33

three actions are urgently needed

·         first we must reopen schools but make sure they are safe schools

·          second we must prevent what the world bank and unesco estimate could be a funding gap of 200 billions in education budgets in the next year as countries reallocate resources to health and social welfare and

·         third to use available resources to greatest effect we must be innovative

by creating the international finance facility for education securing 500 million of grants and government guarantees that could unlock two billion dollars of educational investment to be made through the asian development bank and other development banks

08:13 and i urge the korean government to join  as a funding donor of the development banks and we must use this crisis as an opportunity to transform education

 8.25 you see if you think of the monumental changes we have seen in the way we organize our factories, our homes, our hospitals and our travel,

08:30 and then think of how little education has changed with until recently so little online and how little the school itself has changed from the setting of world classrooms with the teacher as the sage on the stage and the pupils sitting in rows of desks

08:44 think of the educational revolution we need as we meet the demand for ever-changing skills: continuous learning and try to harness technology to support those most left behind

08:55 a study published just last year revealed how disparities in learning achievements have not diminished over the last 50 years; the most disadvantaged still perform at levels that are three to four years behind the most affluent and we must change this

09:09 online learning became a necessity almost overnight but yet close to half of the world's pupils and students don't have access to the internet

09:17 across the world more than 460 million- almost one third of school-aged children had not been reached by remote learning at all -so this could be the moment for us to transform education, to create individualized adaptive learning which meets children where they are with personalized learning, at scale for every student not just the lucky few

09:39 https://educationcommission.org/about/commission-leadership/

this is why the education commission and its hub in asia under the leadership of korea’s ju-ho lee are spearheading the high tech high touch for all initiative: combining the power of human touch and interaction from teachers with the power of adaptive learning and technology such as artificial intelligence. the high-tech refers to an adaptive technology that can help deliver personalized learning. it identifies prior knowledge and tailors instruction to diverse learning

needs allowing students to be stimulated and nurtured as they progress at their own pace. this can also be done initially in low-tech ways but artificial intelligence can allow us to track a child's

experience with software informed data and gear every child's learning to their aptitude is one way forward. the high touch element is the indispensable human connection provided by teachers. with the use of high tech teachers, can give more personalized guidance.no longer just the lecturer who's the sage on the stage but also the tutor and mentor who is the guide by the side.

10:38

we've already seen the promise of this approach in asia in vietnam as well as in india-and here in korea the HTHT university consortium which includes 16 member institutions provides support to korean universities that use the HTHT approach in their curricula and the k-12 consortium targets low-income students across multiple cities 

TODAY. i'm glad to announce the launch of HTHT for all a global consortium across governments, ed tech innovators, industry providers and educators that will develop a rigorous evidence base and create a collaborative network to support bold ways to address the digital divide so let us be the first generation where every child not only goes to school and learns but feels able to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have in themselves to become and let us be the first generation where instead of developing only some of the talents of some of our children in someof the world's countries we develop all of the talents of all children in all countries

11:40 thank you very much

 

TRANSCRIBED FROM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuumR85el_4

with approaching two thirds of the world's youth asian hubs