25 January 2021
Education is a human right, a public good and a public responsibility.
The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education to celebrate the role of education for peace and development.This Third International Education Day occurs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to a global learning disruption of unprecedented scale and severity. The closure of schools, universities and other learning institutions, as well as the interruption of many literacy and lifelong learning programmes, has affected the lives of 1.6 billion students in over 190 countries. Governments everywhere moved swiftly to offer alternative solutions, but at least one third of the world’s students were not able to access remote learning. It is estimated that those in low- and lower-middle-income countries have lost nearly four months of schooling compared to six weeks lost in high-income countries.
The pandemic has exacerbated social and economic inequalities, putting a generation at risk of a “learning catastrophe,” as put by UN Secretary-General in his Policy Brief on Education and COVID-19. But the pandemic has also elucidated the importance of education as a public common good and the bedrock of social cohesion, well-being and opportunity in every society.
At the same time, the pandemic has been a wake-up call to make education systems more resilient to crisis and more inclusive, flexible and sustainable. It has shown the capacity of systems to innovate, expanding the frontiers of learning possibilities; the enterprise of teachers to ensure learning continuity; and highlighted the immense value education holds for learners, families and communities.
The Third International Day of Education will be marked on Monday 25 January 2021 under the theme Recover and Revitalize Education for the COVID-19 Generation. Now is the time to power education by strengthening collaboration and international solidarity to place education and lifelong learning at the center of the post-COVID recovery process.
As part of the Third International Day of Education, on February 10 from 10:00 to 18:00, the Kazakh National Women's Teacher Training University will organize the International Forum “The Futures of Education after COVID-19.” The details of the event will be available later.
Permanent link: http://en.unesco.kz/international-day-of-education-2021