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The OECD's new PISA study, the "Programme for International Student Assessment", has just been published. It notes a worldwide “unprecedented performance drop”, which is of course attributed, among other things, but not only, to the school closures during the Corona years. The 2022 PISA report consists of two publications that summarise the individual country notes: "The State of Learning and Equity in Education" (Volume 1) and "Learning During - and From - Disruption" (Volume 2).

The AI symposium of the German Education Server has been postponed -  the dossier on artificial intelligence (AI) in the international  education sector is already available! So take the opportunity and the time until the new conference date to familiarise yourself with the international discourse on AI in education.  Because not only in Germany, but worldwide, the publication of the  chatbot "ChatGPT" has sparked a debate about artificial intelligence.

You can find out on how this debate is being conducted internationally in the education sector in our dossier.  We offer you freely accessible overview literature & systematic reviews, as well as reports, guidelines, frameworks, organisations & networks and projects. You will also find information on AI and education in various countries & regions as well as articles on AI tools in education.

Due to current events we would like to remind you of our two web dossiers on education in Israel and Palestine.

• Education in Israel
• Education in Palestine

It has now become a tradition - our web dossier on the education system in the respective host country of the Frankfurt Book Fair. This year our dossier is dedicated to the small country of Slovenia. As always, we primarily offer sources that provide an overview of the education system in Slovenia. You can also find information about education statistics and indicators, about authorities and national institutions in the education sector in Slovenia, or about Slovenian research and educational research. In keeping with the book fair, there is also a section on literature and reading culture in Slovenia. There we provide information on studies, associations, projects and bibliographies on translations of Slovenian books. We hope you will enjoy reading the dossier! Your team at Education Worldwide

On July 26, 2023, the new Unesco Education Report was published. This time its focus is on technology in education, with a question in the subtitle: "A tool on whose terms?".

The report explores the debates surrounding the opportunities and risks of technology in education. The authors examine education challenges to which appropriate use of technology can offer solutions (access, equity and inclusion; quality; technology advancement; system management), while recognizing that many solutions proposed may also be detrimental.
The report also explores three system-wide conditions (access to technology, governance regulation, and teacher preparation) that need to be met for any technology in education to reach its full potential.

In addition to the overall report, you can also find 200 country reports on the situation of technology in education in the respective country.

Schools and educational institutions in general are unfortunately not only affected by cyberattacks more often than average. The European Environment Agency also points out in a 2022 publication that a disproportionate number of schools (and also hospitals) in Europe are located in so-called Urban Heat Islands (UHI). Furthermore, 10% of Europe's schools are located in potentially flood-prone areas. We link to the respective reports and graphs of the European Environment Agency. They also contain recommendations for improving the situation of (school) children considered to be particularly vulnerable.

• Original maps and metadata: Schools in Urban Heat Islands und flood-prone areas
•  "Exposure of vulnerable groups and social infrastructure to climate-related risks" (Website with graphs. Menu bar at the very top of the screen)
• "Climate change as a threat to health and  well-being in Europe" (Report of the European Environment Agency EEA)

In the course of the AI debate, everyone is also talking about data or Big Data. In this context, concern is often expressed about the possible lack of objectivity of data in terms of gender, age, race, culture or sexual orientation. The problem is that this can lead to discrimination. An interesting event was organised in this regard by NORRAG, the Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training. It dealt with the "decolonisation of data". A keynote address and two panels covered the following topics:

•     "A New World? Transformational Knowledge and Decolonization" (keynote).
•     "Decolonising International Assessment" (Panel 1).
•     "Decolonising Ed-Tech" (Panel 2).

The website linked here provides the video recordings of the keynote and the panels, as well as the slides for the keynote.

The main target audience of European Schoolnet's MOOC are educators as well as parents with an interest in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education and its potentials and challenges. No previous experience or knowledge of AI is needed to take this course. The course is open from 13.03. till 19.04.23.

Through the four modules of the MOOC, AI resources, tools and technologies will be examined that can be safely implemented in your daily teaching practice to enhance teaching and learning. The MOOC will furthermore explore the use of educational data and how it interacts with teaching and learning. There will also be a reflection on ethical implications of AI’s use in the classroom. At the end of the course, the participants will prepare their own AI-related learning activity, ready to be put into practice.

We admit that the topic of our new dossier is not a very festive one given that Christmas is coming soon.  But it is a topic that has directly concerned us at the DBS and DIPF Institute over the past few weeks, as we ourselves have been victims of a cyber attack. Education Worldwide took the opportunity to research the topic of cybercrime in the field of education. It turned out that education is one of the most popular targets for hackers around the world. The sources we compiled for our webdossier will tell you the reasons for this, it will present you facts and statistics, and it will show you some examples of how different countries are dealing with this problem in the education sector.

In the new web dossier, Education Worldwide has compiled internet resources on the subject of digitisation and digital education in relation to inclusion. The respective web resources examine the extent to which digitisation can support inclusion, but also what barriers there can be to using digital media and new technologies, especially for people with disabilities. We compiled this web dossier in two different ways. You can browse the links to the selected websites either by subject or sorted by source type.

During the war in Ukraine in 2022, many Ukrainians had to flee to other countries. Once there, the question of schooling for the Ukrainian children quickly arose. In this context, Ukraine's good digital education infrastructure was often praised. It allows Ukrainian children to go on learning in their own language with their own curricula, their own teachers, and maybe their own classmates - no matter whether they may still be in Ukraine or in a totally different country. "Education Worldwide" therefore adds a new section to its webdossier on "Education in Ukraine" which provides information on digital education in Ukraine.

With regard to current events (war in Ukraine 2022), our chart of the month highlights the number of attacks on educational institutions in selected countries between 2015 and 2020. As you can see, Ukraine was already included in the sad statistics before 2022. The graph is part of the Unesco Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report) 2021/22. The data used for the graph are taken from "Education Under Attack 2020", a report published by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). There is a "Country Profile" for each country examined. We provide links to the publications of Unesco and the GCPEA as well as to the country profile on Ukraine below.

The Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural and Communication Organisation) and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) are two of the largest international players when it comes to reports, studies and other publications on education. Both have therefore published several interesting publications on the subject of the corona pandemic (COVID-19) and education. We link their publication lists here. The literature is usually free of costs and freely accessible. Sometimes it is also available in different languages.