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With schools and universities closing across Europe, the COVID-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the COVID-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article's five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

Background: Some mortality statistics are misleading when comparing between countries due to varying age distributions in their populations. In order to adjust for these differences, age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) are often produced. ASMRs allow for comparisons between countries as if both had the same standardised population. We examined whether the updating of the standard population for Europe affected the description of the relative burden between countries in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality across the continent. Methods: Mortality and population data were obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) mortality database. ASMRs were calculated using the direct method and two European Standard Populations (ESP): 1976 ESP and 2013 ESP. We investigated differences in ASMR76 (calculated using 1976 ESP) and ASMR13 (calculated using 2013 ESP), changes in rankings of countries between the two ASMRs and differences in trends in CVD mortality in each country for the two ASMRs. Results: CVD rates calculated using the 1976 ESP were on average half the size of rates calculated using the 2013 ESP. Spearman's rank coefficient showed that the ranks of countries by ASMRs calculated using the two ESPs were different for both sexes. Joinpoint analyses showed no difference in the direction of trend between ASMR76 and ASMR13 although differences in the magnitude of the change were found in some countries. Conclusion: ASMRs are commonly used in studying the epidemiology of a disease. It is crucial that policy makers understand the effect of changes in standard populations on these rates. This includes how populations with different age distributions compare to each other. Similar effects may be seen in other diseases that are also more prevalent in older age groups, such as cancer and dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]