Cristóbal Cobo (Senior Education Specialist, Core Member of
the World Bank's Global edtech team)
Marie-Helene Cloutier (Senior Economist – World Bank)
As education systems gear toward catalyzing the power of educational technology (EdTech) to unlock learning, a need has risen for more and better information to inform EdTech policy and investment decisions. The World Bank EdTech Readiness Index (ETRI) meets this need by offering much-needed information on whether the enabling conditions for EdTech to thrive are present.
The ETRI is a tool that offers information on the extent to which education technologies, as well as the efforts of multiple actors within a larger EdTech ecosystem, are integrated with broader education system policies and practices. The ETRI goes beyond data relating to availability of devices and the level of connectivity – the typical first-order infrastructure-related indicators most commonly considered around the world – to better capture the key elements of the larger ‘ecosystems’ within the education and technology sectors in a given country whose development are considered critical if investments in ‘EdTech’ are likely to bear fruit. By doing so, the ETRI identifies and measures the different factors that are key for EdTech to be effective, which can help governments pinpoint where there is room for improvement, and at the same time it creates an aggregate measure that can signal to countries their overall level of readiness to deploy effective EdTech policies.
This presentation discusses the main findings, lessons learned, and potential actions which could improve the level of readiness of the HCMC education system to use digital technologies to support teaching and learning at the system level.
The ETRI analyzed policies and practices of the HCMC education ecosystem under six pillars: school management; teachers; students; devices; connectivity; and digital resources. The data was collected using a School Survey for information relating to practices and de facto policy implementation at the school level, and a Policy Survey for information relating to de jure existence of policies. The school survey was implemented remotely (phone) by a consultancy firm between August 22 and September 8, 2022 and 258 principals and 302 teachers from a representative sample of primary and secondary schools in urban and rural/peri-urban areas of HCMC were interviewed. For the policy survey, the information was gathered through a legislative review and follow-up interviews with select public officials. The implementation of this instrument and the analysis of the data is the result of a close collaboration between the technical teams of the HCMC and the World Bank.
The key recommendations that emerge from the analysis are as follows. HCMC would benefit from planning, revising and improving the coherence and quality assurance of its Edtech strategy, while placing teachers and students at its core and prioritizing the acquisition, distribution, and effective use of digital devices in the schools. It would also be beneficial to build on the strengths of the existing school management to support the planning, implementation, and monitoring of the EdTech policies as well as to increase the effective use of digital resources and improve the quality of the internet connectivity in schools while paying special attention to the earlier grades of education and continue to work toward bridging the urban and rural divide. All these dimensions underscore the relevance of designing, executing, and enhancing a comprehensive digital education policy. This policy should be able to a) guide the needed coordination between government institutions and schools; b) guarantees the needed funding to upgrade and expand the existing digital infrastructure (hardware, software, and content); c) provide the needed guidelines and capacity building among the teachers' principals and other key roles; d) deploy a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation plan to not only to assess the effectiveness of the Edtech policy implementation but also to ensure that these measures translate in reduction of inequalities and more quality of learning.