The main thrust of the findings are as follows:
• Learners with a lower socio-economic background have a higher risk of withdrawing from distance learning;
• Weak education reinforces risks in the labour market;
• It's not just a matter of money;
• Migration is bringing about profound change in our communities and education systems;
• The gender distribution across areas of study within higher education is unevenly distributed;
• Maintaining funding for education is necessary to ensure equitable student outcomes;
• In effective education systems, the question of how budget is spent is as important as the question of how much is spent.
Afterwards, a round of questions took place with the audience. Several elements from the answers can be emphasized:
• “The future is hard to predict, but I think most education systems will raise learning opportunities also outside of school. The hybrid models of learning and the digital resources will be with us, also to the point where access will become universal.”
• “The more teachers become creative designers of innovative and technology-based learning environments, the more we will see the effect of integration between digital and other sorts of learning.”
• “That line of frontline capacity is the other part of the equation, you need both policies that prioritise education and the capacity to manage.”
• “I think we should not just measure what got lost in terms of the measures we used before; we should also devise new measures that look at what will be of increasing importance. I think particularly the capacity of students to learn, but also some of the social and emotional skills students have developed.”
• “What education systems should strive for is to make academic and vocational education not a two-tire choice driven by social background, but a different form of learning. So that students have more variety in choosing a pathway of learning that matches their interests, their needs, and their future destinations, rather than parental income or parental education history.”
• “I think that countries who want to see more equitable opportunities, are well advised to pay a lot more attention to those early years. […] The challenge is not to have access to quality to care, but to a stronger educational component.”
• “I think that the future will always surprise us and that form of resilience will be of increasing importance. I think it is a matter of paying more deliberate attention to developing better metrics that complement our metrics on academic outcomes.”
• “It is important to keep a multidimensional frame of reference in those comparisons, and not use just one metric and rank everyone on that. There are different strengths and weaknesses that different countries may value, and therefore we have multiple dimensions. […] I must also say that we often overinterpret that uniqueness.”
