The Minister of Education, Jokin Bildarratz, presented the Plan for the Digital Transformation of the Basque Education System for the period 2022-2024 on 29 April in Bilbao. The Department of Education will invest 202.6 million euros in this plan for the three years of this period 2022-2024. Along with the Minister, the presentation ceremony was attended by the Deputy Minister of Education, Begoña Pedrosa, the Deputy Minister of Vocational Training, Jorge Arevalo, and the Deputy Minister of Universities and Research, Adolfo Morais.

Student in the center

The new plan was created with the aim of promoting a new framework that will leverage pedagogical innovation. Thus, it will strengthen the development of digital skills by using technologies efficiently and optimally in the education system. It places students at the center of the learning process so that they can develop their full potential in the digital age. Therefore, one of the goals of the plan is to promote the digital skills of both students and teachers. It is, after all, an essential step for Basque students to successfully face the challenges of this century.

Adapting the entire education system to the digital age is a priority of the new plan, at all stages. But the challenge posed by this transformation of the education system occurs not only in pedagogy, but also in work organization, infrastructure, and governance. In this context, transformation and the use of digital environments must be driven by transformation in order to improve pedagogical practices.
According to the Digital Transformation Plan, this transformation is a challenge that must be met collectively, with the following general objectives:

• To promote the transformation of the Basque Education System through an innovative model that integrates the use or application of digital technologies.
•  Strengthen the skills of teachers and students to harness and integrate digital capacity into teaching and learning.
• Encourage collaboration between all actors in the education system to meet the challenges posed by digital transformation.
•  Making way for the adaptation and modernization of infrastructures in order to make schools lighter and to ensure connectivity, security and accessibility for all.
• Promote the responsible use of digital technologies to prevent possible digital divide and promote sustainable development, in line with the 2030 Agenda.
• All of the above deals with three basic dimensions:
• A person-centered dimension to strengthen the training of professionals and students.
•  The technological dimension will provide the school with infrastructure and tools to facilitate the quality training process and research of excellence.
• The dimension that includes the whole system, promoting the planning of digital transformation in the Basque education system, from pre-school to university, also in response to the network of Science and Universities.

In Vocational Training

The digital transformation will bring a new evolution to Vocational Training, based on disruptive transformation; a new model of advanced training, with different school organization and structures, new spaces and intelligent systems applied in digital environments.

Some specific actions:

• Develop a digital maturity model that will include new infrastructures, new skills in the advanced use of digital technologies and the development of high-performance learning
• Digital training for teachers and students
• Transformation of digital infrastructures (state-of-the-art equipment, 5G, Wifi 6…)
• Implementation of advanced digital technologies (digital and interactive immersion technologies).
• New spaces for learning in digital transformation.

In the university ecosystem

• The priority is to create the skills required for employability, to be open to rethinking what is taught, and to recognize that technology has the potential to transcend boundaries in education and science.
• Digital empowerment of students, ensuring equity and equal opportunities among university students.
•  Encourage Open Science by improving the availability of results and resources, including bibliographic resources, with the aim of helping to create better science and more globally accessible.
• Main initiatives:
  • All the universities in the Basque University System will have their own Digital Transformation Plan.
  • Fostering connectivity and virtual learning environments; Upgrading the I2Basque data network to ensure internal and external connectivity. Acquisition of technological resources for vulnerable students.
  • Strengthen supercomputing services to strengthen resource autonomy by creating the HPC Polo (High Performance Computing Euskadi) for the entire Basque research community.

The Basque Country in the context of digital transformation

The 2020 edition of the Digital Economy and Social Index shows the positive trend of the Digital Transformation in the Basque Country in the five dimensions that make it up: connectivity, human capital, use of Internet services, integration of digital technology and digital public services.

In general, the Basque Country is almost ten percentage points higher than the European average and four points higher than the national average. It is ahead of countries like Germany, France or Austria. The Basque Country is also the Autonomous Community with the most computers in the classroom, with an average of 1.5 students per computer.

160,000 computers in two academic years

In the last two academic years, the Department of Education has re-equipped laptops so that all students in public schools between the 5th year of Primary Education and the 2nd year of Baccalaureate can have one computer. There have been 100,000 new equipments purchased for the public network. To these must be added the grants awarded for the purchase of 60,000 computers in the contract network, the latter for use from Primary 5 to Baccalaureate.

In this process, a laptop will also be installed for teachers in the 5th and 6th grades of Primary Education, Secondary Education and Baccalaureate, and this year and next for the rest of the teachers in the first four grades of Primary Education.