Campaigns › EdTech Advocacy
EdTech Advocacy: Digital Justice for Public Education
GCE’s EdTech advocacy campaign pushes for technology in education to advance, not undermine, the right to free, inclusive, quality public education and lifelong learning for all. The campaign focuses on closing digital divides, protecting public systems from harmful commercialisation and ensuring that digitalisation strengthens, rather than replaces, the role of teachers and public institutions.
Why EdTech Advocacy in Needed
Growing reliance on digital tools has deepened existing inequalities, with connectivity and devices concentrated in richer contexts while learners in low-income and crisis-affected settings are left behind. At the same time, powerful private actors are reshaping education markets and influencing policy agendas, often without adequate regulation, transparency or accountability.
Our Vision for Transformative, Public-Interest EdTech
GCE envisions digital and technological solutions that expand access to education, support continuity of learning and strengthen critical thinking, civic engagement and democratic participation. Technology must be deployed as a pedagogical tool that is accessible, safe, rights-respecting and guided by public-interest regulation, not as a substitute for properly trained and fairly paid teachers.
What GCE Advocates For
Closing the digital divide
Governments must invest so that no learner is left behind when connectivity and access to technology expand, with particular attention to learners with disabilities, those in emergencies and those currently furthest from education systems. Digitalisation must be accompanied by investments in infrastructure, devices, inclusive design and support for learners, teachers, parents and communities.
Public, open and relevant digital content
States should provide free, open, contextually relevant curricula and high-quality digital education content, resisting models that lock schools into proprietary platforms and deepen commercial control over public education. Digital tools must support education that is inclusive, gender-transformative and responsive to local languages, cultures and knowledges.
Critical digital and data literacies
Education systems need to foster critical thinking alongside digital skills so that learners can navigate, interrogate and safely use online information, platforms and AI-based tools. This includes understanding power, surveillance and data extraction in digital environments, and defending civic space and democratic participation online and offline.
Protecting teachers and education workers
Governments must invest in continuous professional development so teachers can effectively integrate technology in ways that uphold pedagogical principles and learners’ rights. Technology deployment should never be used to justify cutting education budgets, casualising teachers’ work or undermining their professional autonomy and academic freedom.
How the Campaign Works
The EdTech advocacy campaign combines global research, policy analysis and movement-wide learning with national-level advocacy led by GCE coalitions. GCE members document the impact of digitalisation and privatisation, share lessons through the Learning Hub and work together to influence major edtech actors, multilateral processes and financing debates so that digital transformation advances SDG 4 and education justice.
