We need not only ‘text-books’ but also ‘next-books’

Key-board of Sustainable Development

Education is a Human right. Out of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 4 is about quality education. It is expected to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

SDG 4 is in focus for two reasons. First, the 10 targets of SDGs4 are far off the track mainly due to conflicts, the COVID19 pandemic and also due to education is not considered as on top of the agenda by number of poor nations, where food, economy, securityand survival are the priority . Second, United Nations would be holding global summit on education on 16, 17 and 19 September 2022 in New York. It is titled, 'Transforming Education Summit'.

One of the striking figure stated by UNESCO in its report released last week is that 244 million children are still out of school of which 98 million are from Sub Saharan Africa and 85 million are from central and south Asia.

Clearly the objective of 'quality education for all by 2030' , set in SDG4, is at risk of not being achieved. As per UNESCO's Director General Audrey Azulay, there is absoluteneed to put education on 'top of the global agenda'. Transforming Education Summit provides a window of opportunity to do exactly that.

First Day,16^th September is called as The Mobilization Day. It will be youth-led initiative to put forward collective recommendations of youth to policy makers on transforming education. 17^th September is called The solution Day. And 19^th Sept will be The Leader's Day when the heads of state would present their statements on the subject.

The irony is that there are so many issues that need to be on 'top of the agenda'. Climate Change, Pandemic, impending global Energy crisis due to war between Russia and Ukraine, food security , biodiversity loss and health, just to mention a few. 'Top' is crowded . Is there space there for education and that too for its transformation.

The real transformation in educationwould be to ' just do it'. Class rooms are important but more important is making campus the living laboratories for learning. Text Books are needed but more than that we need ' next books' of the future. Black-boards are essential but more essential are the 'key-boards' for digital solutions.

Smart Campus Cloud Network ( www.sccnhub.com ) radiates such concepts. Nearly 400 universities are in process of ' transforming' the campus into education labs . That would transform ' just do it' into ' just did it'

 Dr Rajendra Shende, 

Chairman - TERRE Policy Centre,

Former Director UNEP, IIT Alumni,

Prime Mover Smart Campus Cloud Network 

Coordinating lead author of IPCC.