The discussion stage has been shifted to digital education by COVID-19.

 ■The discussion stage has been shifted to digital education by COVID-19. 

The bipartisan ICT in Education Parliamentary Assembly was held.

Diet members and government officials participated in person, while a total of 40 private sector advisors and media, including myself, participated via the web.

From "ICT in Education" to "Super Education".

The main point of the discussion was this: Let’s think about post-COVID-19 education where that assumption “you go to school, you use textbooks, and teachers teach you” is not real anymore. 

It's been 10 years since we started advocating for the development of digital textbooks and one PC per person. Digital textbooks were finally institutionalized two years ago, but PCs at school remained at 1 PC per five students, the lowest level in the OECD.

The "Law for the Promotion of Information Technology in Education," formulated by this council and enacted last year, has been the driving force behind a great deal of movement since the end of last year.

With the supplementary budget at the end of last year, measures will be taken toward realizing 1 PC per person, and with this emergency economic stimulus package, we will be able to achieve this at once.

Measures to allow the use of copyrights for distance education without permission were also included in this package.

It seems like a decade old problem is about to be solved all at once, and it is like a dream come true from where we were six months ago.

At the beginning of the meeting, Chairman Endo made a speech, saying, "We want to make Japan a ICT education superpower.”

From ICT education underdeveloped country to a superpower.

Let's turn the crisis of COVID-19 into a hope.

These words have got a grip on reality. 

The first thing we should pay attention to in the discussion of the legislators is that the phase moves from school to home.

A number of members pointed out that "each student should be able to take home one device," and that "homeschooling should be the main method of learning.”

They also pointed out that the problem lies in "household communication costs.”

Developing digital textbooks and ICT environment in schools is much cheaper than developing the environment at home.

It only takes a few hundred billion yen. It is such a cheap investment for the country.

That is what we've been insisting. 

It is finally coming true.

But when it comes to homes across the country, the scale of the measure changes dramatically.

Former Minister of MEXT also commented on the division of roles among ministries and agencies, saying 

“MIC and METI should be responsible for the hardware in the first place, while MEXT should be responsible for the content. However, this division of roles is currently reversed.”  

This raises the question of whether METI should be leading the whole process.

Although MEXT, as the main driver to lead this project, and MIC as the second ministry to assist MEXT had been working together on the informatization of education, exchanging personnel and so on, but the progress had been slow. However, in the past few years, METI has finally gotten serious about the measure, and due to its proximity to the Prime Minister's Office, the measure has progressed quickly. That move made MEXT work on this more and quickly. I appreciate the move. I hope they keep up the good teamwork.

MIC has little presence here.

I've been making a lot of noise about this old government ministry.

In the past, I left the government ministry to take the initiative to further promote this, but now it looks like the two top leaders are MEXT and METI.

When measures move from school to home, MIC is supposed to be in charge. I wonder if they will be able be in charge. 

A former Minister of MEXT Hase moved the discussion even further, saying "Do we need textbooks? Do we really need to spend 45 billion yen every year to distribute them? If they are digital textbooks, they can be all on one device per person.” “Teaching materials can be developed across grade levels and across subjects. Do we really need to spend five billion dollars every year on academic tests too?"

His comments were a wakeup call that Japan's educational system of textbooks, curriculum guidelines, and examinations should be fundamentally reexamined. 

It means a lot and carries great significance that these comments came from a former Minister of MEXT. 

This also means that ICT in education has advanced to the next stage, which we call "super education".

The Association for Super-Education, of which I serve as the executive director, has been advocating that infrastructure development for ICT in education which Japan should catch up as well as a cutting-edge technology reform should be both promoted. 

A cutting-edge technology reforms means establishment of "super education", which is exactly the post- COVID-19 education that was discussed in the meeting

I had assumed that COVID-19's legacy would be the advancement of ICT in education, and that the stage would shift from ICT in schools to ICT in homes, but there are signs that things can move forward much further.

I hope that we can make Japan an educational ICT superpower, or even a super education superpower.