What are the lim­i­ta­tions of the plan? Our main con­cern is the nar­row approach that exclu­sive­ly focus­es on “dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion”, leav­ing lit­tle room for holis­tic ICT and media cur­ric­u­la that inte­grate ana­logue and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in a coher­ent approach. We ques­tion the approach to encour­age dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion from an ear­ly age, with­out a sol­id evi­dence-base point­ing towards a pos­i­tive effect of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy on learn­ing out­comes and stu­dent well-being. The new EU-bench­mark mea­sur­ing the dig­i­tal com­pe­tence of 8th-graders will put more pres­sure on gov­ern­ments and schools to imple­ment tech­nol­o­gy-based learn­ing from an ear­ly age. We are there­fore high­ly con­cerned that the plan fur­ther ele­vates already wor­ry­ing lev­els of screen-time among kinder­garten and pri­ma­ry school children.

For this rea­son we are active­ly fol­low­ing both the fur­ther devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of the DEAP at EU lev­el. Recent­ly, we have reached out to Mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment sug­gest­ing changes to the Parliament’s Ini­tia­tive report on shap­ing dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy that pro­vides the Par­lia­men­t’s reac­tion to the plan. The results have been promis­ing so far. Our first analy­sis of the recent­ly tabled amend­ments shows sup­port on key issues across dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal groups. Fur­ther­more, on the invi­ta­tion of ECSWE, S&D rap­por­teur Vic­tor Negres­cu has host­ed a work­shop on ICT and media edu­ca­tion dur­ing this year’s Life­long Learn­ing Week in which he both pub­licly expressed his sup­port for an age-appro­pri­ate approach and encour­aged con­tin­ued lob­by efforts in this direction.

Note: This arti­cle was updat­ed on 28 Jan­u­ary 2021 to reflect the post­poned votes in the CULT-Com­mit­tee from 26 Jan­u­ary to 25 Feb­ru­ary 2021.