Microsoft Malta attends education leaders’ forum in Poland

The two day forum was attended by around 140 policy makers from 43 countries. Microsoft Malta invited Mario Azzopardi, Director of the Life Long Learning Programme within the Education Ministry, to attend as a representative from Malta.

Themed ‘Engaging student creativity and innovation: A key to global success’, this year’s Education Leaders Forum was held in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and the European Schoolnet programme with the aim of creating dialogue on holistic change with the goal of putting technology behind core innovation. This was the fourth in a series of forums exploring the future of post secondary education and the strategies for overcoming barriers to its implementation.

Anthony Salcito, Vice-President of Microsoft Education and host of the forum says “there are three keys we’ve been talking about to reach these goals: Access, Employability & Innovation.  Having the Education Leaders Forum at the same time as the Worldwide finals for the Imagine Cup is not a coincidence.  We link these two events together because both focus on the importance of technology as key to global success - whether it is obtaining your first PC or access to cloud technologies - which leads to employability, economic stability and national competitiveness. “

“In today’s information age, there is little question that information communication technology (ICT) can help drive opportunity and provide a competitive edge in the world economy. World Bank data shows that worldwide, companies that use ICT have over 5% higher profitability than enterprises that do not use ICT.  For every 10-percentage-point increase in the penetration of broadband services, there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points.  But this very data that can give hope also creates the digital divide.  The bridge across that divide is access.”

Mr Salcito concluded, “Microsoft is committed to making the world where we live and work a better place.  By listening to the needs of governments and their citizens, we’re able to channel the passion of our people and the power of technology to the challenges facing the world today. Microsoft’s Shape the Future initiative is a program that helps governments reach ambitious goals by combining Microsoft products and services, years of citizenship, government and education expertise along with broad public private partnership experience. This program has provided more than 1 million European students access to new PCs in the last 12 months alone.”

Hal Plotkin, a senior policy advisor at the office of the under secretary of education in the United States Education Department was a keynote speaker who focused on the development of vocational learning. “Our challenge is to figure out how to transfer higher education from a system that pushes people out to one that attracts people,” he said. “People need to be given an opportunity to contribute to the country’s economy because this benefits society at large. There is a lot of untapped human capital, a lot of individuals who have the capabilities to cure the scourge of cancer and find solutions on how to bridge cultural divides.”

The Education Leaders forum is a highly interactive event that includes visionary keynotes, expert panel discussions with input from education leaders.  This year’s event provided participants with working solutions, policy examples and practical strategies, demonstrating how the private sector, governments and education systems can work together to deliver engaging, relevant and authentic education experiences that will build stronger economies and more cohesive societies.