If Only I Get the Chance
Ann Cotton is the 2014 WISE Prize for Education Laureate. We made an unusual tableau that 1991 November morning against the backdrop of a vast Zimbabwe sky. There was the farmer, tall and barefoot, his child in a worn school blazer, the headmaster in his dark suit, and me. The child was the reason for our […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
Fostering Creativity in the Learning Process
Introducing creativity at school is as simple as redesigning the classroom layout or introducing real-world learning, writes Steven Anderson. Several months ago I was having a conversation with a colleague about creativity in learning. We debated back and forth about what creativity looked like and could you really teach creativity. All this stemmed from a comment I […]
To Join or Not to Join: Decisions Ministries Have to Make About Assessment Studies
As we work in an international organization, we often get a question such as: “What is the right assessment for our country, an international assessment, a regional assessment, or our own national assessment?” This is probably due to the tremendous growth in the number of assessments. Since the International Association for Evaluation of the Educational […]
The China Education Debate: Equity versus Excellence
Education-WISE, Beijing has always been an embarrassment of riches. Beijing is China’s political, intellectual, cultural, and education center, and as such its schools command national attention as well as resources. Beijing also has the luxury of drawing talent from all over China, as well as building bridges to the best schools all around the world. […]
Nurture Creative Thinkers in China
The year 2015 marks China’s new era of mass “entrepreneurship and innovation.” World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) CEO Stavros N. Yiannouka observed in a recent interview that both developed and developing countries of the world are experiencing a bottleneck in economic growth. A transformed economic model is their only way out of it, as […]
Are Creativity and Innovation Possible in Chinese Schools?
The 1899-1901 Boxer Rebellion was imperial feudal China’s last gasp. The Boxers were a cult of mystics who sought to hack to death all foreigners and foreign ideas, and when the Western powers bloodily put down the uprising they also dragged “the Sick Man of Asia” from the 17th century into the 20th. China’s two best […]
Remembering Lee Kuan Yew
On March 29, 2015 world leaders both past and present from more than fifteen countries including China, India, Japan, Qatar, the United Kingdom and the United States, gathered on the island city-state of Singapore to pay their last respects and bid a final farewell to its founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, who passed away peacefully six […]