UNESCO's Global Education Coalition flagships

The Global Education Coalition brings together more than 200 institutional partners from the UN family, civil society, academia, and the private sector working around three central flagships: connectivity, teachers and gender equality.

Coalition members that align themselves with the ‘connectivity’ flagship will pursue actions in one or more of the following action areas through work coordinated or facilitated by UNESCO:

• Universal access to connectivity Broker partnerships and implement projects with Coalition members, especially telecoms and other internet service providers, to improve the availability and affordability of connectivity for education and learning.
• Capacity development Improve capacities to provision and maintain distance learning, including by building digital skills for teachers, learners and, especially, ministry of education officials.
• Right to connectivity for learning Support Member States to develop a universal declaration on connectivity for learning broadening established understandings of the right to education.
• Knowledge sharing Leverage UNESCO’s convening power to facilitate knowledge sharing about responses to school closures and building the resilience of education systems.
• Research Produce and synthesize research, including big data studies, to better understand the impact and repercussions of different distance learning responses 

This flagship aims to valorize the crucial work of teachers and offer them professional development opportunities to strengthen their digital and pedagogical skills. Through high quality and large-scale learning opportunities, the flagship will ensure that quality and equitable teaching can continue. The key objectives of the teacher flagship are:

• Teacher capacity development programmes In coordination with national teacher training institutions, ministries and other national stakeholders, the flagship will provide training for 1 million teachers combining digital and pedagogical skills. The aim is to improve instruction through the use of digital technologies, including the development of resources in low- and no-tech environments. This will mobilize a large number of Global Coalition Members including MOOCs providers and ed-tech industry partners.
• Provision of connectivity and devices The flagship will deliver to less privileged teachers devices and lower connectivity costs. Partners will be mobilized to broker both free connectivity as well as the necessary hardware and software to foster the development and deployment of distance learning solutions, with a focus on equity and gender equality.
• Advocacy The flagship will celebrate the teaching profession as a whole and will include targeted communications campaigns as well as advocacy to policy-makers, supported by data and analysis.
• Monitoring and Evaluation The flagship will mobilize partners to improve data and analysis to measure progress and inform practitioners and policy-makers on effective pedagogies for distance and blended learning approaches.

Global Coalition partners will be mobilized to build teacher capacity around distance education, deploy online platforms, curate teacher training resources and assess and certify digital and pedagogical skills. Through these targeted actions the Coalition will empower teachers and help them find solutions to reach students remotely, assist the return to school and build the resilience of education for the future.

The crisis was also a window of opportunity to promote innovation, and strengthen the resilience and gender-responsiveness of education systems. Where digital solutions to distance learning are accessible, we can build the digital skills of girls and boys alike, and ensure all learners have the knowledge and skills they need to stay safe online.

Coalition members are working together to understand and address gender gaps in learning, and address health, protection and education issues that can negatively impact girls’ and boys’ learning continuity and reduce the likelihood. They help strengthening education systems to be gender-transformative, equitable and resilient.