New digital opportunities to ensure high quality education

The European Parliament has adopted a Report on new technologies and open educational resources by a large majority with 544 votes in favour and 41 against. Milan Zver MEP led negotiations on behalf of the EPP Group.

"The usage of new technologies and open educational resources encourages economic growth in the EU and at the same time enables users to be more efficient and also more competitive on the job market", highlighted Zver.

New technologies and open educational resources can contribute significantly to putting a lifelong learning process and achievement of the Europe 2020 objectives into practice. Data shows that currently, 63% of nine-year-olds do not study at a highly digitally-equipped school and only 20 to 25% of students are taught by digital confident and supportive teachers.

Increased use of digital resources within the education systems is important because it enables young people to absorb new knowledge in an innovative way. In Europe, data shows that going online is a part of children’s activities from a very young age (7 to 9); 15-16 year-olds spend an average of 118 minutes per day on the Internet. The use of new technologies allows learning in a variety of environments, making it easier for students to cooperate while at the same time enabling the learning process to be more adapted to the individual.

In addition, the large increase in the number of educational programmes and other educational resources that are available online for free can help ensure quality education for young people, which is extremely important given the high rate of unemployment among the youth.

"Open or freely available educational resources, respectively, represent tremendous opportunities for the future of education and the exchange of useful information. This is an area legislators need to monitor well in order to provide for rules that will be fair to all parties concerned, in particular to help the end user – knowledge-eager Europeans", concluded Milan Zver.