International Literacy Day: COVID-19 will not stop education

• As schools reopen, they are having to adapt their approaches to ensure social distancing and support pupils who have been isolated for a long time.
• Fortunately, the last few months of the pandemic have served as a testing laboratory for blended learning approaches.
• On International Literacy Day, the EU shows its commitment to help bringing education systems to improved quality standards compatible with the post-Covid reality.
• Our second concerns have been continuity how the education sector can keep going during the pandemic and resilience how can it re-adapt to the new normal.
• And now, this priority will be more present than ever in a soon-to-be-revealed update of the EUs Digital Education Action Plan, which looks at ways of improving digital skills, teaching and infrastructure, at all levels of education.
• We are also trying to ensure that students lose out as little as possible on the opportunities that Erasmus+ provides.

What has the EU been doing to support the return to schools?

• From March onwards, the European Commission organised groups of ministry representatives to share information and good practice on the measures they were adopting to cope with COVID-19.
• In addition, a short survey to learn from the experiences of teachers and school leaders on the return to school under COVID-19 has been recently launched.
• The EU also offers a number of online platforms for teachers and education practitioners where they can enhance their remote teaching skills.
• The School Education Gateway has created a Teacher Academy offering useful MOOCs, webinars and articles on effective methods of online teaching.

Life under Corona: students and teachers share their experience

• This quote from Ewas testimonial, a 13-year-old German student, summarises how most students have felt during the pandemic.
• Hers is only one of the dozens of experiences compiled by the Erasmus+ project Tomorrow in the webpage Life under Corona, a humane approach to how students and teachers have experienced the last few months.
• Video of Cara and Luna_Erasmus Project Cara and Luna, from Germany, decided to share in a video their daily routine as students while staying at home.
• Video of Concerto Virtuale 25 aprile 2020 Messages of togetherness and solidarity came from schools all over Europe, from teachers and students longing to be together again.