Primary education is the largest sub-sector of any education system and offers the unique opportunity to contribute to the transformation of societies through education of youth and children. Millions of children around the world are deprived of the right to education.

The quality of primary education has not kept abreast of the expansion in enrolment. In order for young people to adjust to and compete in the rapidly changing environment of the contemporary world they need to have a repertoire of life skills which includes, among others, communication, analytical and problem-solving skills for creativity, flexibility, mobility and entrepreneurship. Thus, an educational strategy should be oriented on the new lifestyle concept and corresponding skills development alongside with technological innovations.

Strengthening the efforts to achieve the EFA goals and, particularly, the goal 2 “Ensuring that by 2015 all children, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality”, IITE launched in 2011 the “ICTs in Primary education” project. The project is aimed to facilitate the policy dialogue and build foundation for effective primary education by means of ICTs.

The project has global coverage. The project expert team is comprised of ‘ICT in primary education’ specialists from Chile, Hong Kong, Hungary, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, South Africa, UK and USA.

This project is a follow-up activity of the IITE project on ICT in early childhood education, successfully realized in 2010. The survey “Recognizing the potential of ICT in early childhood education” was published by IITE and is available here.

IITE experts shared their ideas about ICTs in primary education (in the framework of the seminar in French National Centre for Distance Education, 18 April 2011, Politiers, France):