The Archive for Education is expanding: a tailored space for primary school pupils on the way
30 Jan 2024The Archive for Education’s mission is to encourage the reuse of our content partners’ audiovisual archive material in the classroom. Since 2016, this curated media database has enabled teachers and trainee teachers to find unique video and audio clips to enhance their lessons. Secondary school pupils have also been able to access the platform, which includes a space specifically designed for them, since 2020. And next academic year, we’re expanding our audience further. With support from Minister Ben Weyts and the Flemish Department of Education and Training, we’re developing a space tailored specially for primary education.
Our educational platform brings our partners’ audiovisual content into the classroom. The media database currently boasts over 26,000 video and audio clips from 60 partners, carefully selected for educational use. And there have been increasing calls from primary schools for their pupils to have access to it too – because there’s a lot to be gained at this level in terms of developing viewing and listening skills, as well as searching skills and media literacy.
Education Minister Ben Weyts has taken this request to heart. Thanks to his support, and that of the Flemish Department of Education & Training, we will now be welcoming primary school pupils to The Archive for Education in the autumn of 2024.
Investing in quality higher education also means investing in a rich variety of learning resources, so that we can also provide more opportunities for our teachers who are dynamic in their approach to the curriculum. And we’ve made significant strides forward with our Digisprong initiative this government term. Our education system was lagging behind in digital areas, but we’re gradually turning that around into a lead.
- Ben Weyts, Flemish Minister of Education
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Accessible authentication methods such as the Flemish government’s LeerID and Smartschool will allow primary school pupils to easily log in to our educational platform – a tailored, ad-free environment where they can engage with quality audiovisual content, selected and tagged with metadata for their age group.
There are a lot more contemporary digital learning resources available for primary schools now. Pupils will soon have access to a much wider variety of challenging viewing and listening exercises.
- Ben Weyts, Flemish Minister of Education
To recap: pupils and The Archive for Education
The Archive for Education was initially aimed at teachers – as an educational platform where they could showcase our partners’ audiovisual content in the classroom. Then, when distance learning became a necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic, we swiftly opened its digital gates to secondary education pupils in 2020. And it was an immediate success: by the end of that academic year, we had granted access to 92,000 pupils at the request of secondary schools.
The following academic year (2020-2021), we launched a completely revamped website, including a custom-designed space for secondary education. Since then, pupils have had access to a well-organised overview of viewing and listening tasks created by their teachers. More than 93,000 secondary education pupils had an active account on the platform that year, with teachers creating almost 11,500 exercises.
Last academic year (2022-2023), thanks to support from VLAIO (Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), we expanded the secondary education student area even more with engaging search and create assignments. These exercises inspire teachers to train their pupils’ search skills and further develop their digital competencies and media literacy. Thanks to the continuous developments on the platform, the number of pupil accounts is continuing to grow year on year. In 2022-2023, we welcomed 94,000 secondary education pupils, with teachers creating more than 38,000 exercises since 2020.
Now, we’re moving towards our next major milestone: a space for primary education.