Launch of Practical Guide to Survey ICT Use in Schools

During this global education crisis, the need has never been greater to develop education policies to help sustain learning in the event of future school closures so that learning never comes to a standstill. The development of policies to support the use of distance learning in particular will need to be informed by robust data on information and communication technologies (ICT) use in and out of schools so these skills can be instilled in learners and teachers. To aid in the effort to collect adequate and relevant data, the UIS and the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society, Brazil (Cetic.br) have jointly developed the Practical Guide to Implement Surveys on ICT Use in Primary and Secondary Schools. The Guide is a step-by-step methodological reference that presents the critical steps to plan, design and implement a survey to collect data on the use of ICT in education. In essence, this publication offers practical guidelines to plan and conduct large-scale surveys on ICT use in education that will serve to improve policy decision-making – an especially relevant step amidst the current widespread launch of online learning platforms in the context of COVID-19 related school closures. Ultimately, this Guide represents a joint effort by Cetic.br and the UIS to support the production of relevant and robust quality data on ICT in education in developing countries, which will be both locally relevant and enable international comparability.