My dear students, courageous teachers, school principals, and parents from IsDB member countries.

Dear national and international partners,

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته...

I am delighted to join the 57 IsDB member countries and the international community to celebrate the fourth International Education Day.

This year's theme, "Changing Course, Transforming Education," comes on the heels of the devastating COVID-19 and the challenges and deficits it has revealed in most education systems worldwide.

Therefore, it is a timely moment to reflect on the pandemic's impact on derailing the past decades' development gains and the opportunities to address the challenges it poses to education.

In this regard, I would like to reaffirm the Islamic Development Bank's total commitment towards building back better and more resilient education systems.

The Islamic Development Bank focuses on inclusive human capital development as an overarching strategic pillar to boost overall economic recovery, tackle growing poverty, build stronger resilience, and drive robust green economic growth in member countries.

Education remains an essential prerequisite and a determinant of building human capital. Indeed, it is a fundamental right for every child and adult in the 21^st century.

Hundreds of millions of children are out of school and millions of school-goers cannot meet the minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. This is coupled with the apparent mismatch between the graduates' skills and in-demand competencies across the labor market. These factors affect employability and lead to massive unemployment and underemployment amongst youths.

Therefore, the transformation of education systems is a significant responsibility of both governments and development partners.

In collaboration with its global partners, the IsDB is firmly committed to helping its member states transform their education systems to meet the 21st-century skills and competencies required for productive engagement in society and drive inclusive economic growth and shared prosperity.

Towards that end, we will relentlessly deploy innovative products and mechanisms to provide our member countries with affordable education financing. We will also strengthen collaboration with our partners in the education community and promote digital transformation in the education systems.

More significantly, we should emphasize critical thinking and bring into the classroom dialogic education instead of the discredited monologic teaching method.

Thank you.