Future-ready Learners’ Outcomes and Assessment
As schools strive to be relevant and globally connected, school reform takes on both local and international contexts. International contexts have become widely associated with comparative results from international tests, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which purport to measure certain aspects […]
Using the Crisis to Reimagine Educational Systems and Practices
The Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman once wrote: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically […]
Creating a Better Future Through Equality in Education
‘Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.’ – H.G. Wells Over 1 billion children are out of school in over 140 countries around the world due to COVID-19. Schools, teachers and governments have responded in creative ways to ensure students continue their education during this difficult time. EdTech companies are offering their products for free to […]
Accelerating Action for System-Change in Education
The apparent pause in the earth’s spinning brought about by the global Coronavirus pandemic, is a time for profound reflection and reappraisal of the most fundamental things we used to take for granted. It is a time to recalibrate our values and the entrenched socio-cultural norms and misguided priorities according to which we have been […]
The New Success for our Learning Future
Crises both disrupt and reveal. Every single human being across our globalized world has been impacted by COVID-19, and this moment has revealed deep structural inequities and outdated principles and priorities across societies. This is particularly true for our understanding of schooling, and how it reflects our emerging learning economies. If this moment offers us […]
Thoughts from the Frontline of COVID-19’s Education Crisis
Rarely in human history does an event help expose the inadequacies of our systems all at once. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed failings across the board. In the words of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, COVID-19 is ‘‘exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: The lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; the fiction that unpaid […]
What if Kindness Is the New Normal? A Call to Re-Imagine the Purpose of Education in the Post-COVID World
The United Nations has described the global scale of education disruption from COVID-19 as “unparalleled.” According to UNESCO monitoring, at the peak in early April, national and local closures have impacted about 91.3 percent of the world’s student population. While students across the board have been impacted, it is important to understand the impact on children […]
Education Disrupted: Stories from the Frontline of COVID-19’s Education Crisis
The global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is unparalleled. Overnight, entire economies, education systems, and social infrastructures came to a grinding halt, laying bare the interconnectedness of our modern world and the vulnerability that comes with it. As widespread physical lockdown lurks as an ever-present reality, the question arises how to develop systems […]
Love in a Time of COVID-19 Snapshots from the Frontline: Interventions, Practices, and Rapid Responses
For a decade, Symphonia for South Africa (SSA) has mobilized active citizenship, fostered cross-sectoral collaboration, and built social fabric around the critical issues facing South Africa. Our flagship programme Partners for Possibility (PfP) focuses specifically on the country’s education crisis. PfP is a leadership development programme that partners principals of under-resourced schools with business […]
The Elephant in the Room
Throughout the past months we have participated in many round table discussions and webinars with our colleagues from around the world, comparing and reflecting on our countries’ different responses to the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of education. At Fondazione per la Scuola della Compagnia di San Paolo, we also recently had the honor of […]