Rethink, reimagine and reinvent education

As the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” goes, it takes an all of community approach to reimagine sustainable education, especially in a post-covid world leveraging technology.

I had the pleasure of giving the opening address at the launch webinar of TCS Sustainathon ASEAN 2021. I was joined by a panel of distinguished speakers representing our ASEAN partners:

• Prof Dr Fuad Abdul Hamied, Executive Director at Association of Southeast Asian Teacher Education Network Teacher Education Quality Assurance Agency
• Ms Janine Teo, CEO of Solve Education!
• Mr Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head at TCS iON
• Dr Velislava Petrova, PhD, Innovation Consultant with UNAIDS health innovation exchange - hiex.
• Mr Giri Balasubramaniam, Indian Administration Fellowship Officer on Special Duty with the Department of Education, Government of Karnataka, India (moderator)
• Ms Rashmi Furtado, Co-founder and Senior Editor of TeacherTribe.world (moderator)

We launched TCS Sustainathon last year in Singapore as sustainability-focused ideathon platform. The idea was to put people at the centre of solving sustainability issues through technology and innovation. The inaugural edition received overwhelming response and we promised to take TCS Sustainathon globally. TCS Sustainathon is currently running in India, and in the UK on the sidelines of COP26. In this region, we have launched the ASEAN Edition.

Focusing on the theme of ‘Reimagining Education’, TCS Sustainathon ASEAN 2021 was launched on 6 October, a day after World Teacher’s Day. The ASEAN edition is taking place with sessions in Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore.?

Why Reimagining Education??

The pandemic has caused a setback in our continued push towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Quality Education for all. As per UNICEF, over 1 billion children are at risk due to school closures across 188 countries when the pandemic hit. 90% of the countries adopted remote learning to ensure continued learning. But not all the children have access to technology - 31% of the children could not continue learning due to lack of access to technology. For example, TV is supposed to be most accessible medium but only 60% students have access to TV, 40% have access to internet and 16% have access to radio. So, the first aspect to consider is that we need to look at multiple technology mediums for remote learning.?

The second aspect is lifelong learning. We are living in the fourth industrial revolution where the pace of change has been unprecedented. The pandemic has only accelerated this change. We have a huge task of reskilling people by 2030. 42% of core skills people have today are expected to change. All of us will need to adopt a lifelong learning approach to stay relevant.

The education landscape was drastically disrupted in the past two years and it will continue to evolve rapidly beyond the pandemic. In a drastically disrupted education landscape, these tertiary students participating in TCS Sustainathon will problem-solve and innovate using technology to help learners adapt, ensure inclusive and quality education for all, and promote lifelong learning, while supporting the well-being of all learners.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our ecosystem of strategic, challenge, supporting and outreach partners for their unwavering support towards TCS Sustainathon and for sharing this vision of building a sustainable future with TCS. Together with our partners, we are inviting young change-makers to reimagine, rethink and reinvent the learning experience!

More about TCS Sustainathon ASEAN 2021 - https://bit.ly/ssn-asean2021

Catch the recording of our launch webinar - https://bit.ly/ssn-aseanwebinar1?

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