Latest news with #EducationWorldForum
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI
While many schools in England have banned smartphones, in Estonia – regarded as the new European education powerhouse – students are regularly asked to use their devices in class, and from September they will be given their own AI accounts. The small Baltic country – population 1.4 million – has quietly become Europe's top performer in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's programme for international student assessment (Pisa), overtaking its near neighbour Finland. In the most recent Pisa round, held in 2022 with results published a year later, Estonia came top in Europe for maths, science and creative thinking, and second to Ireland in reading. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, it now outperforms countries with far larger populations and bigger budgets. There are multiple reasons for Estonia's success but its embrace of all things digital sets it apart. While England and other nations curtail phone use in school amid concerns that it undermines concentration and mental health, teachers in Estonia actively encourage pupils to use theirs as a learning tool. Now Estonia is launching a national initiative called AI Leap, which it says will equip students and teachers with 'world-class artificial intelligence tools and skills'. Licences are being negotiated with OpenAI, which will make Estonia a testbed for AI in schools. The aim is to provide free access to top-tier AI learning tools for 58,000 students and 5,000 teachers by 2027, starting with 16- and 17-year-olds this September. Teachers will be trained in the technology, focusing on self-directed learning and digital ethics, and prioritising educational equity and AI literacy. Officials say it will make Estonia 'one of the smartest AI-using nations, not just the most tech-saturated'. Kristina Kallas, Estonia's minister of education and research, said during a visit to London this week for the Education World Forum: 'I know the scepticism and carefulness of most of the European countries regarding screens, mobile phones and technology. The thing is that in the Estonian case, society in general is much more open and prone to using digital tools and services. Teachers are no different.' Kallas said there were no mobile phone bans in schools in Estonia. On the contrary: a smartphone is seen as part and parcel of Estonia's highly successful digital education policy. 'I've not heard of any problems, to be honest,' she said. 'The schools establish the rules, which are followed on a local level. We use mobile phones for learning purposes.' She added: 'We have local elections coming in October this year. In local elections, 16-year-olds can vote, and they can vote online through their mobile phones. So we want them to use mobile phones to do their civic duty, to participate in an election, to get the information, to analyse the political platforms. 'It's a little bit strange if we would not allow them to use them in school, in an educational setting. That would be a very confusing message to 16-year-olds – vote online, vote on a mobile, but don't use ChatGPT on your phone to do education learning.' Kallas insisted: 'We are not banning. We've given guidelines, especially regarding younger children – younger than 12 and 13 years old – when it comes to how mobile phones should be used or should not be used, but most schools have regulated it themselves. 'They have regulated it so that mobile phones are not used during the breaks, and in the lessons they are used when the teacher asks for the phones to be taken out because there is some assignment or exercise that is done with the help of phones.' Rather than trying to resist new technology, Estonia has embraced it. In 1997 there was huge investment in computers and network infrastructure as part of its Tiigrihüpe (Tiger Leap) programme. All schools were rapidly connected to the internet. Now smartphones and AI are seen as the next step. Kallas talks about an AI revolution entailing the end of essays for homework, a farewell to the memorise/repeat/apply learning model relied on for hundreds of years, and a shift to oral exams. The challenge is to develop higher cognitive skills in young people, because AI can do the rest better and faster. 'It's a matter of urgency,' she said. 'We are facing this evolutionary, developmental challenge now. We either evolve into faster-thinking and higher-level-thinking creatures, or the technology will take over our consciousness.'
Budapest Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Budapest Times
Hankó: The world is paying more and more attention to Hungarian higher education
Balázs Hankó, the minister for culture and innovation, said Hungary's successful higher education reforms are being recognised on the international stage. In connection with the ongoing Education World Forum in London on Tuesday, Hankó told MTI that the world is paying more and more attention to Hungarian higher education, noting that the country's higher education reforms were the only topic to be featured in two presentations at the forum. Hankó said the interest that the reforms had attracted had to do with the ascent of Hungarian universities in international rankings in recent years. 'Today, there are 12 Hungarian universities in the world's top five percent, one of which is in the top one percent and three in the top two percent,' Hankó said. 'We have doubled our scientific performance, and the number of students admitted to technology, science, engineering, IT, agriculture and medicine programmes has increased by 44 percent.' The participants at the Education World Forum, which is being attended by the higher education ministers of 135 countries, were mainly interested in how Hungary's higher education sector had succeeded in establishing close relations with economic players under the new foundation model, Hankó said. Hankó said there are currently 46,000 international students studying in Hungary, and the aim is to increase their number to 80,000 over the coming years.
South Wales Guardian
19-05-2025
- Science
- South Wales Guardian
UK to back global rules on AI in schools, says Phillipson
In a speech to the Education World Forum in London on Monday, Bridget Phillipson will aim to put Britain at the forefront of a 'revolution' in education technology. As well as funding efforts to create guidelines on the safe and effective use of AI in the classroom, she will announce £1.1 million in funding for a pilot examining how technology can improve staff workload, outcomes for pupils and inclusivity for children with special educational needs. She will say: 'Setting AI on the right track now is the most important challenge for global education in a generation. 'We need to come together to grow a global, collective consensus – a suite of effective tools, built on top-class evidence.' The UK will also host a summit next year to support the development of global guidelines on using generative AI in education. Existing guidelines leave schools free to make their own decisions about the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT, provided they comply with their legal obligations. The guidelines also say that safety should be the 'top priority' when deciding whether to use generative AI, and that schools should not use pupils' work to train AI models without permission. The Government is already using AI to produce attendance reports in an effort to cut down the number of days children miss school, and aims to use the technology in other areas as well. Ms Phillipson is expected to tell Monday's conference: 'We're using technology to free up teachers to spend more time teaching. 'For children that means more attention, higher standards, better life changes. 'For teachers – less paperwork, lower stress, fewer drains on their valuable time.'
South Wales Argus
19-05-2025
- Science
- South Wales Argus
UK to back global rules on AI in schools, says Phillipson
In a speech to the Education World Forum in London on Monday, Bridget Phillipson will aim to put Britain at the forefront of a 'revolution' in education technology. As well as funding efforts to create guidelines on the safe and effective use of AI in the classroom, she will announce £1.1 million in funding for a pilot examining how technology can improve staff workload, outcomes for pupils and inclusivity for children with special educational needs. She will say: 'Setting AI on the right track now is the most important challenge for global education in a generation. 'We need to come together to grow a global, collective consensus – a suite of effective tools, built on top-class evidence.' The UK will also host a summit next year to support the development of global guidelines on using generative AI in education. Existing guidelines leave schools free to make their own decisions about the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT, provided they comply with their legal obligations. The guidelines also say that safety should be the 'top priority' when deciding whether to use generative AI, and that schools should not use pupils' work to train AI models without permission. The Government is already using AI to produce attendance reports in an effort to cut down the number of days children miss school, and aims to use the technology in other areas as well. Ms Phillipson is expected to tell Monday's conference: 'We're using technology to free up teachers to spend more time teaching. 'For children that means more attention, higher standards, better life changes. 'For teachers – less paperwork, lower stress, fewer drains on their valuable time.'
Glasgow Times
18-05-2025
- Science
- Glasgow Times
UK to back global rules on AI in schools, says Phillipson
In a speech to the Education World Forum in London on Monday, Bridget Phillipson will aim to put Britain at the forefront of a 'revolution' in education technology. As well as funding efforts to create guidelines on the safe and effective use of AI in the classroom, she will announce £1.1 million in funding for a pilot examining how technology can improve staff workload, outcomes for pupils and inclusivity for children with special educational needs. She will say: 'Setting AI on the right track now is the most important challenge for global education in a generation. 'We need to come together to grow a global, collective consensus – a suite of effective tools, built on top-class evidence.' The UK will also host a summit next year to support the development of global guidelines on using generative AI in education. Existing guidelines leave schools free to make their own decisions about the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT, provided they comply with their legal obligations. The guidelines also say that safety should be the 'top priority' when deciding whether to use generative AI, and that schools should not use pupils' work to train AI models without permission. The Government is already using AI to produce attendance reports in an effort to cut down the number of days children miss school, and aims to use the technology in other areas as well. Ms Phillipson is expected to tell Monday's conference: 'We're using technology to free up teachers to spend more time teaching. 'For children that means more attention, higher standards, better life changes. 'For teachers – less paperwork, lower stress, fewer drains on their valuable time.'
