Digital technologies are a key resource for OECD education and training systems. If used effectively, they promise to transform teaching and learning practices and help to advance quality, equity and efficiency. Digital education technologies can enhance educators’ ability to respond to students’ learning needs and interests, to make teaching more engaging and differentiated, and to widen access to countless learning resources. New technologies also promise to extend the reach of highly effective educators, to reduce learning inequalities and to create more inclusive education systems.
Investment in education technology has surged worldwide over the past decade and digital education technologies increasingly permeate schools and classrooms. Since the COVID‑19 pandemic, there has been an unprecedented increase in their use, which enabled the continuation of organised instruction during the crisis. In higher education, surveys show that most students, educators, and administrators expect higher education providers to continue widely using blended and hybrid learning in the future.
These developments raise the question of how education systems can make effective use of digital technologies and reap their potential. As it stands, most education systems are far from providing full and equitable access to high-quality digital technologies and their current use tends to fall short of transforming teaching and learning. The COVID‑19 pandemic exposed these shortcomings and underlined the need for supportive policies and conditions to make use of the full potential of digital technologies in education.
This report seeks to support governments in shaping digital education by analysing digitalisation policies and enabling factors that can support quality, equity and efficiency. The report covers school education at the primary and secondary level, vocational education and training (VET) (including initial school-based VET), and higher education offered by education institutions. Digital technologies are broadly defined to include networks (such as the Internet), hardware, software and technology-related services. The report focuses on their uses in the context of teaching and learning.
Chapter 1 of the report presents an analytical framework to assess digital education policies along with eight analytical dimensions, which are then examined in more detail in subsequent chapters, taking stock of challenges and opportunities for policymakers, empirical evidence, and policy practices in OECD education systems:
Chapter 2 - Strategic visions and policy co-ordination
Chapter 3 - Pedagogical approaches, curricula and assessments
Chapter 4 - Guidance and regulatory frameworks
Chapter 5 - Funding and procurement
Chapter 6 - Accessible, innovative and high-quality digital infrastructure
Chapter 7 - Capacity building
Chapter 8 - Human resource policies
Chapter 9 - Monitoring and evaluation
For each dimension, the report also presents a number of promising policies and initiatives that may help education systems to unlock the potential of digital education technologies. Some of the key policy directions emerging from the analysis are summarised below.
