The Digital Challenge in Arab Education: Lessons from COVID-19 Crisis

Digital tools play an increasing role in various domains of daily life, as well as the labor market, and consequently also in higher education and vocational training. Therefore, an increasingly high level of digital proficiencies (proficiencies such as operating a computer, executing actions, and solving problems in digital environments) is essential for successful integration into the labor market, as well as higher education and vocational training, and also for performing daily activities. In this policy paper, we examine the capacity of the Arab education system to equip its students with digital proficiencies, and the disparities which exist in relation to the Hebrew education system.

The COVID-19 crisis had forced the education system to shift immediately to remote learning, through the use of digital tools, and exposed the low level of Arab education in regard to digital proficiencies, teaching and learning through digital tools. Reviewing the data reveals that the level of digital proficiencies in Arab society, among students and their parents as well as teachers, is lower in comparison to the proficiency levels in Jewish society.
Furthermore,there are disparities in the availability of digital infrastructure in Arab households, as well as the quality of this infrastructure in terms of network speed and stability. These disparities, which during COVID-19 crisis hindered the successful implementation of remote teaching and learning, are also expected to hinder the routine acquisition of digital proficiencies, which in the wake of COVID-19 crisis are more necessary than before, due to the mass shift to remote work and remote learning, which extends to higher education as well.