Estonia avoids telephone prohibitions in schools and jumps in AI | Schools

While many schools in England have prohibited smartphonesIn Estonia – considered to be the new power of European education – students are regularly invited to use their devices in class, and from September, they will receive their own AI accounts.

The small Baltic country – 1.4 million inhabitants – has quietly become the most efficient in Europe in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for the International Evaluation of Students (PISA), exceeding its close neighbor of Finland.

In the last Tour de Pisa, held in 2022 with results published a year later, Estonia came to the lead in Europe for mathematics, science and creative thought, and second in Ireland in reading. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, it now surpasses countries with much larger populations and larger budgets.

There are several reasons for the success of Estonia, but its adoption of everything that distinguishes it. While England and other nations reduce the use of school phones among the concerns it undermines concentration and mental health, teachers in Estonia actively encourage students to use their own as a learning tool.

Now, Estonia is launching a national initiative called Ai leapWho, according to him, will equip students and teachers with “world -class artificial intelligence tools and skills”. Licenses are being negotiated with Openai, which will make Estonia a test bench for AI in schools. The objective is to provide free access to high -level AI learning tools for 58,000 students and 5,000 teachers by 2027, from 16 and 17 years in September.

Teachers will be trained in technology, focusing on autonomous learning and digital ethics, and the prioritization of educational equity and the literacy of AI. The officials say that it will make Estonia “one of the most intelligent nations of AI, not just the most saturated in technology”.

Kristina Kallas, Minister of Estonia for Education and Research, said during a visit to London this week for the Forum of the World of Education: “I know the skepticism and caution of most European countries concerning screens, mobile phones and technology. The fact is that in the Estonian case, the company in general is much more open and subject to the use of digital tools and services. Teachers are not different. “

Kallas said there was no mobile telephony ban in schools in Estonia. On the contrary: a smartphone is considered an integral part of the very successful digital education policy of Estonia. “I have not heard of any problem, to be honest,” she said. “Schools establish the rules, which are followed at the local level. We use mobile phones for learning purposes. ”

She added: “We have local elections to come in October this year. During local elections, 16 -year -olds can vote and they can vote online via their mobile phones. So we want them to use mobile phones to do their civic duty, to participate in an election, to obtain information, to analyze political platforms.

“It's a bit strange if we do not allow them to use them at school, in an educational setting. It would be a very confusing message to the 16 -year -old children – vote online, vote on a mobile, but would not use the Chatppt on your phone to make education in education. ”

Kallas insisted: “We did not prohibit. We have given guidelines, in particular with regard to young children – under 12 and 13 years old – with regard to the way in which mobile phones must be used or should not be used, but most schools have regulated it themselves.

“They regulated it so that mobile phones are not used during breaks, and in lessons, they are used when the teacher asks that the phones be removed because there is an assignment or an exercise that is done with the help of the phones.”

Rather than trying to resist the new technology, Estonia has adopted it. In 1997, there were huge investments in computers and network infrastructure as part of its Tiigrihüpe (Tiger Leap) Program. All schools were quickly connected to the Internet. Now, smartphones and AI are considered the next step.

Kallas talks about an AI revolution involving the end of the tests for duties, a goodbye to the model for learning memorization / repeat / apply to hundreds of years and a passage to oral exams. The challenge is to develop higher cognitive skills among young people, because AI can do the rest and faster.

“It's a matter of emergency,” she said. “We are now faced with this evolutionary and developmental challenge. We evolve either faster and high -level creatures, or technology will take control of our conscience. ”