Education in a Post-COVID World: Additional Considerations (In-Progress Reflection; No.43, 2021)

This discussion document analyses some implications of the ideas proposed in the seminal UNESCO document “Education in a post-COVID world: Nine ideas for public action” (2020). Based on the work of the International Commission on the Futures of Education, the documents’ contributors included prominent figures with a wide range of professional and policy experience who hail from various regions of the world. The set of nine interconnected ideas illuminates the way forward toward the transformation of education and education systems and a reimagined future seen through a progressive lens. On one hand, it reaffirms basic principles, understandings, and commitments with regard to education as a global common good and universal human right; it also articulates the need to both reinvent multilateralism for a new global order and, crucially, to mobilize ideas and funding for transforming education. On the other hand, the document advocates for a comprehensive educational agenda, including the following critical issues: (i) visualizing educators as decision-makers in educational systems; (ii) appreciating students as active actors with rights; (iii) recognizing the value and specificity of the school space; (iv) addressing the dilemmas around technology’s ability to serve as an equalizer of opportunities; and (v) revisiting educational content for the sustainability of younger generations.