ICDE chief warns digital push could leave learners behind

The global race to bring artificial intelligence and digital technology into education must not come at the expense of learners who lack reliable internet access, affordable connectivity or the ability to study online, the head of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) said.

ICDE Secretary General Torunn Gjelsvik said education systems should focus not only on how quickly they can adopt new technologies but on whether those technologies actually expand access to quality education.

“The question we therefore need to ask ourselves isn’t how can we make education more digital? It is rather, who is education reaching and who are we still leaving behind?” Gjelsvik told reporters during a knowledge dialogue in the Philippines.

“How can technology expand opportunities rather than deepen inequalities?” she said.

The International Telecommunication Union estimated that about 6 billion people were online in 2025, leaving 2.2 billion offline. It also reported persistent gaps in affordability, quality and digital skills, with internet use substantially lower in low-income countries and rural areas. 

Gjelsvik said the assumption that education has already become universally digital obscures the conditions faced by many learners, particularly those in remote and underserved communities.

“We can tend to think that now everything is online, everybody’s using AI, but that’s not the case,” she said.

She said ICDE members are working on ways to use technology in environments where internet connections are limited or bandwidth is expensive, including parts of Asia and the Pacific.

The challenge is especially relevant to the Philippines, where internet access remains uneven. ITU data showed that about 67% of Filipinos used the internet in 2024, indicating that a substantial share of the population remained offline. 

For Gjelsvik, expanding digital education therefore requires more than putting courses online.

“Technology changes so quickly, so new solutions appear all the time,” she said, stressing the importance of sharing research on “what works, what doesn’t work” and technologies that can function in low-bandwidth settings.

Education amid disasters

Gjelsvik also linked the future of open and distance learning to another pressing Philippine concern: the ability of education systems to withstand disasters.

Typhoons, flooding, earthquakes and other disruptions can prevent students and teachers from reaching schools, while power interruptions and damaged infrastructure can interrupt conventional classroom-based education.

During the knowledge dialogue, she said, organizers had to contend with a scheduled power interruption, heavy rain and flooding.

“It’s good to really feel it, and explore it. It’s important for us to be here, not only to hear about it in theory, but actually hear it from the people who live here and see how it affects education,” Gjelsvik said

She cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a demonstration of why education systems need mechanisms that allow learning to continue when schools are forced to close.

“Schools and universities had to close down, so education stopped. And how could learning continue?” she added.

Distance education institutions played an important role during that period because they already had systems and capacity that allowed instruction to continue outside physical campuses, she said.

That experience, she added, should inform how education systems prepare for future challenges, particularly in places where students may be unable to reach schools or where basic infrastructure needed for face-to-face classes is temporarily unavailable.

For Gjelsvik, the lesson is not simply to put more education online. It is to build learning systems that can remain accessible under different circumstances and respond to the realities of the communities they serve.

Philippines as contributor, not just participant

Thus, the ICDE chief said said the Philippines should not approach the 2027 global conference simply as a venue where international experts share their experience.

She said the country and the wider Asia-Pacific region have their own experience and innovations that can contribute to the global discussion on the future of education.

“This is therefore simply not a story about what the Philippines can learn from the world. It’s equally a story about what the world can learn from the Philippines,” she said.

ICDE said its September knowledge dialogues in Cebu and Metro Manila were intended to build partnerships and gather regional perspectives ahead of the 2027 conference. Discussions covered inclusive, scalable and sustainable learning systems, digital transformation and innovation in education. 

Gjelsvik said international cooperation should not seek to make education systems identical.

“We don’t believe that the purpose of a global network is to make every institution think or act the same way, but the opposite,” she said.

“The value of an international community is that we can learn from differences, identify shared principles, and then adapt knowledge to local realities.”

For the Philippines, that means bringing its experience with distance education, geographic barriers and disaster disruptions into a global conversation increasingly dominated by AI and digital transformation.

“Open and flexible and distance education is not simply about technology. It’s about finding ways of reaching people whose circumstances do not fit the traditional molds of education,” Gjelsvik said.