Two new policy documents aim at making the EU education systems fit for the digital age and boosting the provision of basic and advanced digital skills by 2030.
Supporting the digital transition is high on the EU agenda. This also applies to the digitalisation of European education and training systems. Europe’s Digital Decade policy programme (see SwissCore article) sets the targets of having 20 million ICT specialists in the EU by 2030 and having 80% of the EU’s working age population equipped with basic digital skills. In order to achieve these targets, the EU put in place the Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP) containing 13 actions. On 23 November 2023, the Council of the EU adopted two Council Recommendations setting the policy framework to foster digital education in the EU. The two policy documents fulfil two of the actions of the DEAP (actions 1 and 10). The first Recommendation on the ‘key enabling factors for successful digital education’ addresses the development of a digital education ecosystem, while the second text, the Recommendation on ‘improving the provision of digital skills and competences in education’, aims at enhancing digital skills.
The Council Recommendation on the key enabling factors calls on the EU Member States (MS) to develop national strategies for digital education and skills, to further invest in digital equipment and infrastructure to provide all teachers with a personalised device (which can for example also be financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility RRF, see SwissCore article), and to provide more training to teachers on digital education content and tools. It further calls on the MS to implement cybersecurity awareness measures in schools. The European Commission (EC) will support the MS by providing guidelines regarding what high-quality digital education content is, with a survey about how schools in Europe are using digital tools, to be conducted every three years starting in 2025, and by fostering an “interoperability framework” for higher education institutions (HEI). The goal of all these efforts is to ensure “universal access to inclusive and high-quality digital education” across the EU.
The second Council Recommendation on improving the provision of digital skills addresses all sectors of education and training and all levels of digital skills, from basic to advanced. The text asks the Member States to set national targets for digital skills, to facilitate the participation of “priority or hard-to-reach groups” for example via adult education, and to start teaching of informatics from the start of compulsory education. The Commission will also establish guidelines on informatics teaching and learning tools. Further, the EC will support the recognition of digital skills certifications by creating a new European Digital Skills Certificate.
Increased efforts on the national level are strongly needed in order for the EU to reach its targets of 20 million ICT specialists and of 80% basic digital skills by 2030. In 2019, only 56% of the working-age population had basic digital skills. This is likely to increase due to the demographic change with more digital natives entering the workforce. When it comes to ICT specialists, the EU had 8,4 million in 2020. The challenge in this regard is more difficult to solve, as there is a huge gender imbalance in this sector. The Recommendation therefore calls for the promotion of a gender-balanced uptake of informatics teaching and learning.
Switzerland faces similar challenges when it comes to the lack of ICT specialists; experts predict a lack of 40’000 ICT specialists in Switzerland by 2030. A national strategy for a Digital Switzerland sets the goals and an action plan, based on the EU’s Digital Decade.