The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) and the Greek Chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers will on 30 June at 14.30 CET be hosting a webinar on Inclusive Education in Times of Covid-19.

In March 2020 almost all European countries, as an urgent measure to limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus, abandoned education of school children in class and replaced it with distance learning. Disadvantaged students struggled to adapt to distance learning, including for reasons of insufficient or complete lack of access to online learning platforms or means of communication with their teachers. Nonetheless, some authorities, schools, teachers and other actors in the education sector were better prepared or reacted quicker to mitigate the negative effects of the school closures, supporting educational continuity even in these exceptional times. Against this background, the webinar will bring together a number of key international and national stakeholders and experts to discuss ways and means of countering what in practice may amount to exacerbated forms of discrimination faced by certain groups of pupils, in particular migrant and/or Roma children, during times of exceptional schooling arrangements as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic or other similar situations.

The webinar will be opened by Miltiadis VARVITSIOTIS, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece and Maria Daniella MAROUDA, Chair of ECRI. They will welcome a number of panellists, including Drahoslav ŠTEFÁNEK, Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on Migration and Refugees, and Fengchun MIAO, Chief of the UNESCO Unit for ICT in Education.

The programme of the webinar is available here.

The concept note can be found here.

The webinar will also be livestreamed on Facebook (link)