Creative Public Leadership
How School System Leaders Can Create the Conditions for System-wide Innovation This article is the executive summary of the 2015 WISE Research Report “Creative Public Leadership“. Find out more about the 2015 WISE Research series. This interim report explores how school systems can create the conditions for successful innovation that transform outcomes for all learners. The focus […]
Redesigning the Goals of a 21st Century Education
Many have addressed how present and future students should learn. Few have examined what students should learn for the 21st century. The rapid increase in the rate of systemic change around the globe creates an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world and thus is significantly more unpredictable. Six emerging trends will require a diverse set of individual abilities and […]
The World Needs a New Curriculum
“Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you… Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.” ― Chris Hadfield, astronaut What will it take for the world to stop offering our children an education that is only a slightly updated version of what was offered in the 19th century, and […]
Teacher Policies
Global Best Practices for Developing the Teaching Profession This article is the executive summary of the 2015 WISE Research Report “Teacher Policies“. Find out more about the 2015 WISE Research series. Teacher polices are key to improving teacher quality which impacts student outcomes. Many educational systems grapple with the issues of recruitment, teacher preparation, performance management, teacher […]
K-12 Reform in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries
Challenges and Policy Recommendations This article is the executive summary of the 2015 WISE Research Report “K-12 Reform in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries“. Find out more about the 2015 WISE Research series. In an age of global connectivity in which knowledge and information are the currencies of individual success, education is among the best investments […]
Can Venture Capital Unlock Innovation in Education?
Tech investors and entrepreneurs will often tout venture capital as a vehicle to enable innovation in education. But that’s not what venture capital does, although innovation might at times be one of the side-effects. Venture capital is investment, and a particular kind of investment in a particular kind of startup at that. Venture capital is […]
Business for Education is Education for Business
Professor Tom Fletcher will be speaking at the 2015 WISE Summit. In the last month, 200,000 Syrian refugee children have had the chance to return to school in Lebanon — some of them for the first time in more than four years. This was a talismanic example of what the public and private sector can achieve […]
Preparing Children For An “Only the Innovators Survive” Future
The Economist published an article on 18 January 2014 titled “Coming to an office near you: the effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense – and no country is ready for it”. The Oxford University’s “The Future of Employment” study in 2013 predicts that 47% of today’s US jobs will cease to exist […]
Purpose and Capital to Bring Quality to Education
“Over the past generation many of the most talented people on earth have tried to transform capitalism itself, to use the market to solve social problems. These are people with opposable minds: part profit-oriented and part purpose-oriented.” In describing these “opposable minds,” New York Times columnist David Brooks was commenting on how investors and the social entrepreneurs they are […]
“Learning by doing and making; the virtue of combining very old and very new ideas”
More than a decade ago, when I was in charge of the strategy and policy units under Prime Minister Tony Blair, I lamented to a friend that some of the policies simply weren’t working. The government had no shortage of educational policies. But the ones aiming to re-engage disengaged teenagers showed little sign of any […]