Regional Workshop on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education Statistics 

On 25-27 November 2015, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) held a regional training workshop on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education statistics “Building capacity to establish an international statistical framework” for national statisticians from Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. The workshop took place in Moscow (Russia) and brought together about 40 experts from ministries, national statistical institutions, agencies and international organizations of 17 countries. 

The baseline expectation was to develop statistical capacity of national focal points and help countries participate in the first UIS global ICT in education survey. The main objectives of the workshop were to review recent national experiences and trends regarding ICT in education; gain knowledge about the particular characteristics of ICT in education data collection and use in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia; advocate the use of ICT in education indicators to support evidence-based policy making; increase the number of countries in the region that regularly produce quality ICT in education statistics; share experiences and address the problems that countries may encounter in collecting ICT in education statistics. 

The workshop was chaired by Prof. Alexander Khoroshilov, UNESCO IITE Officer-in-Charge, who also delivered a speech on the IITE activities. The welcome speeches were addressed by representatives of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, CIS-STAT, Commission for Science and Educational Development of the Public Chamber and Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Ms. Svetlana Knyazeva, Chief of UNESCO IITE Section of Digital Pedagogy and Learning Materials, delivered a presentation “Benchmarks for quality technology enhanced learning: measuring student mobility in higher education”. Participants shared their national experiences in the sphere of ICT in education statistics and discussed the presentations given by representatives of international and regional statistical agencies. The analyst of OECD, Mr. Francesco Avvisati, delivered the presentation “Students, computers and learning: Making the connection” via Skype. In order to help national respondents from ministries and statistical offices to complete the survey, the UIS experts Mr. Peter Wallet and Ms. Beatriz Valdez-Melgar presented and explained in detail the UIS questionnaire on ICT in education data developed for  the UIS global survey. The results of this survey can be used for evidence-based policymaking while monitoring country progress towards key targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

As a result of the discussions, participants made a number of recommendations on the development and implementation of the system of internationally comparable ICT in education indicators as well as improving the procedures of ICT in education data collection. It was also proposed that IITE and UIS would consider a possibility of organizing similar workshops in other regions.

Technical and logistical support for the event was provided by the Correspondence School MEPhI within the framework of Memorandum of Cooperation between UNESCO IITE and the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI.

Workshop programme

Other workshop materials

• OOSC-2014
• Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All (Executive Summary)
• Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All (Full report)

More information about UIS workshops on statistical capacity building is available on the UIS website.