This note provides an overview of Luxembourg’s digital education ecosystem, including the digital tools for system and institutional management and digital resources for teaching and learning that are publicly provided to schools and educational stakeholders. The note outlines how public responsibilities for the governance of digital education are divided and examines how Luxembourg supports the equitable and effective access to and use of digital technology and data in education. This includes through practices and policies on procurement, interoperability, data privacy and regulation, and digital competencies. Finally, the note discusses how Luxembourg engages in any initiatives, including with the EdTech sector, to drive innovation and research and development towards an effective digital ecosystem.
Country Digital Education Ecosystems and Governance
21. Luxembourg
Abstract
Key features
The central government owns, develops and provides a widespread digital infrastructure of software and applications for system and school management at all levels of education: student information systems, exam administration systems, administrative and facility management systems, learning management system, etc.
The central government also provides various digital resources for teaching and learning, developed in‑house or procured from commercial providers, but school staff use them at their discretion and in competition with privately supplied resources.
At a lower level of government, municipalities are further responsible for acquiring and maintaining hardware digital infrastructure in primary schools; this remains the responsibility of the central government in secondary education and VET.
The access to and use of data and digital technology in education is only partially regulated – and solely by the central government. Using the publicly provided tools for education management is often mandatory by law, but using specific teaching and learning digital resources is not as schools have significant pedagogical autonomy, especially in primary education – albeit, in practice, teachers must meet certain requirements as regards certain digital competences, which are themselves inscribed into the national curriculum.
The country strategy for digital education has long focused on hardware infrastructure; since 2019, it turns towards preparing the education system for the future society, developing more advanced digital tools (e.g. digital credentials, intelligent tutoring systems), equipping students and teachers with the relevant set of digital skills, and setting up mechanisms of collaboration between schools, researchers and EdTech companies.
General policy context
Division of responsibility
In Luxembourg, the public responsibility for providing education is split between the central government and municipalities in primary education while it lies entirely with the central government in secondary education and VET. This mostly centralised system has some consequences on the distribution of public responsibilities for providing access to, encouraging and regulating the use of, digital technologies at both levels of education. In primary schools, besides a set of digital tools provided by the central government to manage mostly administrative functions, the rest of the digital ecosystem is made available at the discretion of municipalities. Municipalities are endowed with central government funding based on a formula that mitigates socio-economic disparities across municipalities. In secondary schools, including vocational education and training, however, the entire digital learning infrastructure is provided and maintained by the central government.
Private education institutions are relatively out‑of‑scope of the government’s digital strategy and responsibility, be it government‑dependent or independent private schools. While the former are co‑financed by the state, they acquire their hardware infrastructure (Internet connection and devices) with their own budget, but can freely access any of the management and learning tools publicly provided to schools by the ministry of education. The few independent private institutions of the country have no access to the ministry’s tools and are fully responsible for their entire digital learning infrastructure.
Whereas the provision of digital infrastructure to schools is partly decentralised, the regulation and governance of digital education is centralised. Built on the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), the legal framework that governs the access to, and use of, data in education is enacted by the central government and applied aside from the division of responsibility between educational levels.
Digital education strategy
The government of Luxembourg published its first digital education strategy in 2015, Digital4Education, supplemented in 2019 by a new initiative, Einfach Digital.1 These action plans have led to changes in the digital education policy and expenditures related to most aspects of the country’s hardware infrastructure: broadband connectivity, Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity, devices in schools and for students, intranet servers. This has strengthened a digital learning ecosystem that already allowed for comparatively high levels of ICT access and use across all sectors of the economy in Luxembourg.2 However, the scope of Luxembourg’s digital action plan in education is somewhat limited by the autonomy granted to municipalities over the public digital learning infrastructure provided to primary schools. To account for the lessons learnt during the pandemic, the country’s digital education strategy will be further updated in 2023.
A cornerstone of the country’s digital education strategy is the one2one programme that enables secondary schools to provide access to one tablet per student in the secondary classes that choose to opt for this programme. In such classes, students can lease a tablet for a low price (and for a further reduced price if they come from a disadvantaged socio‑economic background). The one2one programme has gained traction since its introduction in 2018, reaching more than 40% of secondary school students as of 2021.3
The public digital education infrastructure
In Luxembourg, the government assumes most of the responsibility for providing and maintaining the digital infrastructure in education – much more than in many other OECD countries. As part of Luxembourg’s Ministry of National Education, Children and Youth (hereinafter, the ministry), both the Centre for Education Digital Management (CGIE) and the Service for Coordinating Research and Innovation in Pedagogy and Technology (SCRIPT) provide a panoply of digital tools and resources to the country’s schools.4 However, schools in Luxembourg do have a large pedagogical autonomy so they can choose to acquire additional elements to the publicly accessible digital ecosystem, whether from the business sector or from other education stakeholders that make digital tools and resources available for free in Luxembourg, such as philanthropic organisations (e.g. the Up foundation), universities and teachers. This section reviews two aspects of the public digital infrastructure in Luxembourg: digital tools for system and school management, and digital learning resources for teaching and learning.
Digital ecosystem for system and school management
Student information systems and learning management systems
To support system and school management, collect data and generate statistics, the ministry has developed and owns two student information systems: Scolaria in primary education, and Fichiers Eleves² in secondary education. All public schools must use them. From a school perspective, they have many of the common administrative functionalities of a learning management system (LMS). They help school staff manage student enrolments, enter and consult individual and class data, link students to their teachers, track student advancement and progression throughout the years, and facilitate the appointment of substitute teachers. In both systems, all students and teachers are identified through a unique and longitudinal identifier (ID) – despite the separation of the primary and secondary education systems (and corresponding databases). Both systems store teacher‑given grades and provide real-time information and analytics dashboards to teachers, school leaders and ministry officials. While different stakeholders have different access to these students information systems, the ministry and all public schools use an integrated system.
Other digital tools publicly provided by the ministry to both primary and secondary schools supplement these functionalities: the Ministry’s customer relationship management system to communicate with parents and students and various other tools with administrative functionalities (Webuntis for timetables and study plans, Tera for Teacher Requirements and Assignments, Recorps for providing support to students with special needs, Syclope for human resources management, Edvance for supporting the school development management, Seredi for managing requests for the recognition of a foreign diploma or qualification) and facility management systems (Ereservation for rooms and resources, Ecopy for printers).
Secondary schools also have access to publicly provided content management and learning management system (LMS) focusing on learning content called eduMoodle.lu. While primary schools can choose their preferred additional content or learning management system, secondary schools must use eduMoodle.lu to ensure interoperability with other system‑level systems like the student information system. It provides learning and content repositories, recommendation and communication tools, as well as analytics dashboards that provide key learning information to users. The CGIE has developed and launched in September 2022 a new tool called e-bichelchen that is some sort of online agenda that informs teachers and educators about homework given by teachers. It allows teachers (in schools) to communicate with educators (in day care structures) and parents (at home) (www.ebichelchen.lu).
The ministry also provides its secondary schools and students with additional tools, notably edupass.lu, a digital credential system that stores both formal and informal educational badges that was being rolled out in lower secondary education in 2022 in the newly opened “Digital sciences” track.
Exams and assessments
The ministry also requires schools to manage exams with two digital tools for exam administration: PFS supports the management of the national assessments at the end of primary education, and BAC, the national end‑of‑secondary-school exam (namely registrations, grading, students’ progress). Those two national exams (which are perceived as “high-stake” for students as they influence the decision on the track where students will continue their studies) are not digitised. They receive paper diplomas.
While commissioned by the ministry, the assessment is managed by the University of Luxembourg (LUCET). Students take the computerised questions on the Oasys platform, developed by LUCET in close collaboration with the ministry. Some parts of the standardised student assessment administered at the system level (EpStan) are digitised. The individual results of this national assessment, which takes place for entire cohorts of students in years 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, are stored in a database which is separate from the ministry’s information systems (and databases), although the results can in principle be linked to students’ unique identifier. Provided in a sufficiently aggregated format to preserve anonymity, the results are an important source of comparative feedback for schools on their students, and for families on their children.
Admission and guidance
Building on the architecture of its two student information systems, the ministry provides both primary and secondary schools with a range of web applications that serve other system management purposes. A central system to manage student registration in school simplifies the enrolment procedures of students to their local school (where primary students are mandated to go), school transfers, as well as the admission process to secondary schools. It is the IAM (Identity and Management) system, which is only directly accessible to the CGIE, which is fed with data from the two systems "Fichiers élèves" and "Scolaria". The enrolment of pupils is done via the two systems "Fichies élèves" and “Scolaria”. Neither system uses algorithms to process students' applications and match them with their desired educational institutions. It also plays no role in admission to the desired secondary school. It is only accessible to the administrative staff and the school staff, but not to the students.
To help students navigate their studies, submit their application to the student admission management system and find their future career, the ministry has set up two study guidance platforms: Meng Schoul, hosted by the Maison de l’orientation, is a website that provides a mapping of secondary and VET schools to help primary school students make a choice as well as career and study guidance to general and VET secondary students.5
Likewise, teachers have access to a career management platform, Eformation, which is also maintained by the ministry to make its training offer available to teachers, help teachers keep track of their mandatory training, and for the ministry to validate their training with the linked EPI application.
In this rich public digital education ecosystem, all tools are accessible via a single sign‑on (SSO) service called IAM (Identity and Access Management). An IAM account is automatically allocated to all secondary education students, to teachers, school leaders and to all ministry agents needing access to deliver some of the ministry’s services. The IAM is used as a basis for developing further web applications.
In a late stage of development is for example the so called “eduGuichet”, a one-stop-shop for students and parents where they can find all necessary documents (exam results, diplomas, school restaurant information, timetables, etc.). Its launch is planned for 05/2023.
Digital ecosystem for teaching and learning
Compared to the provision of digital tools for the management of systems and institutions, the ministry plays a less prominent role in the public provision of resources for teaching and learning – not because it does not offer such resources, but because it gives varying degrees of autonomy to schools as regards their choice of providers.
In secondary education, the procurement for private digital learning resources (or devices) is contracted at the central level: the CGIE (in charge of digital technologies) and the SCRIPT (in charge of learning resources) negotiate their prices with suppliers, roll them out in schools and monitor their use and effectiveness. In primary education, schools procure resources on their own, choosing between a private and a public offer. The SCRIPT has indeed developed or acquired a large offer of learning applications (e.g. mathematic.lu or learning applications from profax.ch) which primary schools can choose to use for free or not. The ministry also provides them with guidelines on the recommended steps to a good procurement process.
As mentioned above, secondary education teachers have access to some public resources that support their teaching through a public learning/content management system like eduMoodle.lu. In addition, the ministry has contracted Microsoft to allow every agent in the ministry, every teacher in public primary and secondary education, and every student in secondary education to access their Office 365 suite. The licence was negotiated at the central level.6 During the COVID-19 crisis, the universal access to Office 365 allowed a relatively fast transition to distance learning during school closures – which in turn accelerated the uptake of its resources by all concerned actors. Teams was used as the main virtual classroom environment tool. This may remain the case in the coming years.
During the pandemic, the government also set up a platform enabling students, teachers and parents to access a variety of static and interactive learning resources targeted at all educational levels: Schouldoheem.lu.7 This platform is now an integral part of the digital learning infrastructure available to students, teachers and families in Luxembourg. It includes a large and growing panel of learning resources available for free, in five languages, covering a variety of subjects at all levels of education. It also hosts thematic remedial courses, to be taken after class or during the summer break as part of the Summerschool programme that was initiated to mitigate some of the impacts of school closures. Schouldoheem.lu also offers two dedicated helplines, including one that offers mental and psychological support.
Finally, the ministry provides a range of other online didactic resources and self‑assessment tools. Some are made openly available to the general public (e.g. on heydoo.lu, oli.education.lu, edudocs.lu) and allow anyone to explore and shop all sorts of didactic resources available in Luxembourg, browsing contents by grade, subject, language, format (printed and digital books, audio, video, apps, etc.). Others, however, are only accessible for individuals enrolled in education through their IAM login. This is the case for instance with MathematTIC.lu, a personalised learning platform that houses various curriculum‑based exercises in mathematics that feature real‑time feedback, differentiated instruction and actionable data for teachers and students. Some of those resources are specifically addressed to students with special needs.
Whether digital or not, the ministry has no monopoly over the provision of most didactic resources in Luxembourg – and, especially in primary education, limited control over their use. The resources that the SCRIPT develops and offers to schools and teachers are made available in competition with those of non‑governmental suppliers or editors. This mechanism is similar to the one that rules textbook provision, where primary and – to a lesser extent – secondary schools navigate between public and private provision. Since 2018, there is also an online platform for that, the mybooks.lu app, developed by the SCRIPT and the CGIE. It curates all mandatory textbooks (and their digital version, if any) and facilitates their free delivery to students in public and private government‑dependent secondary schools.
Access, use and governance of digital technologies and data in education
Ensuring access and supporting use
Providing a public digital education infrastructure does not necessarily imply stakeholders will use it. Providing public funding for schools and teachers to use digital resources does not guarantee it will be used either. There are thus usually different policies to support the use of technology, for example mandating the use of (some) digital resources, supporting the acquisition and use of digital resources, or integrating their use in the curriculum.
Equity of access
Luxembourg’ policies secure higher levels of digital equity than in many other OECD countries. In secondary education, the public, centralised provision allows for a sustained and homogenous access to the diverse components of the digital education ecosystem, thus ensuring equitable access to digital tools and resources for all students, teachers and schools. The optionality of their one2one programme makes it more efficient while providing equal opportunities to classes (if not individuals). However, the devolution of responsibilities regarding infrastructure to municipalities in primary education leads to possible disparities and inequities across municipalities. While the primary school funding formula could in principle partially correct for those disparities, it leads to an uneven access of hardware and learning resources at that level – and strong disparities of education technology access between the primary and secondary levels. Those disparities appeared more clearly when the COVID‑19 crisis led to school closures and then partial remote education.
Supporting the use of digital tools and resources
The ministry mandates the use of some of its system and school management tools across all public institutions in the country, notably its student information systems, its school registration system, exam administration and national assessment systems. While other management systems must also be used in secondary education, this is not the case in primary education.
Given teachers’ pedagogical autonomy, there is also no obligation for teachers or schools to use the public teaching and learning resources made available in the digital ecosystem. The government’s resources are largely in competition with those offered by commercial providers, although they may be more attractive as they are provided free of charge for the end users. Some of them (e.g. Microsoft Office 365) really started to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic, although they were already available. As of 2023, there are no recent statistics about the actual use of digital tools and resources for education.
To effectively support the use of its public tools but also of private tools that schools may acquire, the ministry offers central and local guidance to teachers, as well as professional learning opportunities to use these resources as part of their pedagogy. The ministry appointed pedagogical and digital leaders (i.e. support teachers) at the regional level to support teachers in their online teaching, an expertise that was highly appreciated during the COVID-19 pandemic but that predated it and is still available.
Cultivating the digital literacy of education stakeholders
The National Institute for Teacher Training (IFEN) defines the key competences that teachers must develop as part of their in‑serving training. After being employed as a teacher by the state, teachers have a two-year induction period with trainings, mandatory tutoring, classroom visits, etc. Those expectations have been updated in 2015 to include the use of digital technology in education.8
Developing student skills to “use and understand digital technologies” is an objective of the national curriculum, both in primary and secondary education.9 Coding and computational thinking were added to transversal skills in primary education, and “digital sciences", in secondary education.10 This provides an incentive to teachers to use digital devices and resources.
More generally, to inform parents and students and involve them in consultations about the use of digital technology in schools, the government has also set up two public websites (beesecure.lu and roadmap.lu) and launched initiatives to foster their participation in the broader political debate (see jugendparlament.lu or the CNEL).
In addition, in order to foster a digital culture among all stakeholders, in February 2023 Luxembourg has set up a blended 6-week course around the MOOC Elements of AI (EoAI), with a weekly webinar allowing participants to interact with an instructor (a PhD student from the University of Luxembourg). To this effect, the Ministry of Education and Youth (SCRIPT and IFEN), the University of Luxembourg (Department for Media, Connectivity and Digital Policy and Competence Centre) and the National Civil Servants Training Agency (INAP) as well as industrial federations are cooperating to promote the Luxembourg EoAI programme, willing to raise awareness about the AI topic to a broader audience, including students, the workforce and teachers.11
Governance of data and digital technology in education
Supporting use can only work if stakeholders recognise that the use of digital technology and the data it generates will not hurt them in the future. Part of country regulation is about generating trust in using digital tools in their local context.
Luxembourg regulate the access to and use of data and digital technologies in education. In education as in other sectors, as a member of European Union, data protection falls under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), which was translated into national law. In addition, the government produced specific rules and guidelines about the protection of personal data and privacy of teachers and school staff, as well as about data portability in education. This dual objective is implemented through the government’s single sign‑on, secure identifier (IAM) that grants selected access to all stakeholders of the ecosystem’s applications depending on their status in order to protect everyone’s personal data. The ministry does not conduct any inspection or random control to enforce proactively the rules that govern the protection of data and the use of digital technology in education. Their breach can be challenged in court though.
Given its non-existent to very limited use of automated decision-making and AI-based tools, no specific policy effort to regulate this aspect is in place. Generally speaking, the ministry would be held accountable in case of errors caused by the use of technology in education. To minimise the occurrence of such errors, though, the ministry has passed rules and guidelines that impose minimal standards of performance on the digital technologies used in education.
Similarly, as of June 2023, no regulation or guideline governed interoperability of the different tools that compose the digital ecosystem. The SCRIPT and CGIE applications use open standards (e.g. XML, CSV, JSON, HTML, REST API, SAML) that may serve as examples for other agencies and individuals – but there is no explicit guideline or regulation in this area yet.
Supporting innovation, research and development (R-D) in digital education
Developing a national education technology ecosystem is a challenge for appropriate local tools to be developed. Providing incentives, supporting R-D, funding education technology start-ups are part of the typical innovation portfolio countries could consider.
The ministry of education has communicated clear research and development priorities about digital education and education data use to encourage academic research in this field. In the last five years, the ministry has commissioned academic research on the use of digital technologies to improve learning outcomes, to improve student engagement, to support teaching, and to help students with special needs. Digital education was also one of the two focuses of the 2021 National Report on Education co‑edited by the SCRIPT and the University of Luxembourg, which compiled articles authored by over 70 researchers.12 The report analyses the digitalisation of education in Luxembourg through multiple perspectives, from digital literacy to online and distance learning. It also reports the first observations of the monitoring of the one2one programme, and, in line with the OECD evaluation of Luxembourg’s COVID‑19 Response (OECD, 2022[1]), takes stock of the changes brought about by the pandemic to the education system as a whole – including how the country’s digital infrastructure in education allowed for effective remote learning and mitigated the negative impacts of school closures.
Within the ministry, the SCRIPT develops some digital tools and resources, sometimes in collaboration with EdTech companies.
The government has no particular policy to support the development of an EdTech sector, for example through formal subsidisation mechanism, tax credit or R‑D investment support targeted at EdTech companies. Incentives to foster collaboration between private companies and the public sector are thus mostly non-monetary: conferences organised by the SCRIPT to convene education stakeholders with EdTech companies is one example.13 The launch of TalentHub in 2019, a start‑up hub sat within a secondary school to introduce arts and crafts students to the field of entrepreneurship in EdTech, exemplifies this approach.14 The CGIE and the SCRIPT also grant time credits to teachers to incentivise them to develop digital teaching and learning resources, either by themselves or in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg and/or private companies.
In terms of future priorities, the ministry aims to add to its public digital education ecosystem a digital credential system in upper secondary education and VET (building on eduPass.lu), to improve (or enrich) its online education platforms and resources in primary, secondary education and VET, by further developing the Schouldoheem.lu platform. It also considers providing Intelligent Tutoring Systems at all levels of education as well as classroom analytics tools.
References
[1] OECD (2022), Evaluation of Luxembourg’s COVID-19 Response: Learning from the Crisis to Increase Resilience, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2c78c89f-en.
Notes
← 1. Digital4Education: https://digital-luxembourg.public.lu/initiatives/digital4education; Einfach Digital: https://men.public.lu/fr/publications/dossiers-presse/2019-2020/einfach-digital.html
← 2. In 2017, Luxembourg ranked 6th worldwide in terms of its ICT Development Index, accounting for ICT access (1st place), use (8th) and the population’s digital skills (74th) (ITU, 2017).
← 3. One2one programme: https://portal.education.lu/cgie/INNOVATION/ONE2ONE; Uptake: https://bildungsbericht.lu/fr/article/le-programme-one2one-dans-lenseignement-secondaire-au-luxembourg-dun-objectif-en-termes-dequipement-a-des-objectifs-en-termes-de-competences/
← 4. Portal of applications: https://portal.education.lu/Applications
← 5. Meng Schoul: www.mengschoul.lu
← 6. Contract agreement between Microsoft and the Ministry: https://portal.education.lu/dcl/ & https://portal.education.lu/dcl//Office-365-for-Education
← 7. Schouldoheem.lu: https://www.schouldoheem.lu/fr
← 8. Teachers competency framework: https://legilux.public.lu/eli/etat/leg/loi/2015/07/30/n2/jo
← 9. National curriculum: www.curriculum.lu; Digitalisation in primary education: https://men.public.lu/fr/publications/courriers-education-nationale/numeros-speciaux/plan-etudes-ecoles-fondamentale.html
← 10. Additions to the national curriculum in primary education: https://men.public.lu/fr/publications/dossiers-presse/2019-2020/einfach-digital.html & www.educoding.lu ; in secondary education: https://men.public.lu/fr/publications/dossiers-presse/2020-2021/210518-digital-sciences.html
← 11. Luxembourg EoAI: http://www.elementsofai.lu/
← 12. 2021 National Report on Education: https://bildungsbericht.lu/