The role of school education in promoting the learning and wellbeing of young people has never been more important, yet our understanding of how best to achieve these goals seems to be becoming increasingly tenuous.
Change is the only constant.
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, around 500 BC
A crucial policy issue is ‘ … how to deliver high quality, efficient, equitable and innovative education in increasingly complex education systems.’ … [T]he challenge is to ‘ … balance responsiveness to local diversity with the ability to ensure national objectives.’
(OECD, 2016)
In the face of dramatic and accelerating changes to how we live and work, the role of school education and the nature of the curriculum has become highly contested. At the same time, evidence that established approaches to education reform have had limited effectiveness suggests that there will be a need for fresh thinking about educational governance and approaches to change if schools are to keep pace with a rapidly transforming external environment.
What then should be the role of school education in face of the growing fragility of many current assumptions about its enduring relevance to the future? How can we be confident about what learning matters most and ensure high standards as external expectations change? How can we balance apparent tensions between pressure to raise standards and student and teacher wellbeing? How can schools best address inequalities and meet the diverse needs of all their learners? Can school systems reform in ways and at a pace that reflect an increasingly febrile and complex world? What might be the key characteristics of a learning education system that can meet these challenges?
The change imperative
History bears witness to the capacity of human beings to adapt and even thrive in face of the inevitability of change. New baselines are constantly emerging upon which successive generations then build. Advances in technology, for example, such as the invention of the printing press, the harnessing of steam power or the advent of electricity have each transformed how people have lived and worked and how societies and economies have functioned. However, developments in science and technology feeding globalisation and allied to climate change have introduced changes over at least the last thirty years that impact how we live and work on a scale and at a pace that bear little comparison to those experienced by previous generations. The significance of the current context is summed up by Friedman (2019), who argues that we are ‘living through one of the greatest inflection points in history’. Similarly, Andreas Schleicher, the Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), points to the interaction between technology and globalisation as making,
‘the world more volatile, complex and uncertain’ (Schleicher, 2018a). While we cannot be sure about the longer-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it seems likely that it will have a catalytic effect on pre-existing forces and tensions. For example, questions about how to determine an appropriate balance between digital and face-to-face learning or how to address growing national and international inequalities have already been thrown into stark relief by the exigencies of the pandemic.
Perhaps the strongest underlying pressure to change has stemmed from developments in technology. From the second half of the 20th century we have seen an accelerating process of technological change, from the earliest computers to contemporary developments in artificial intelligence, big data, biotechnology, quantum physics, robotics and miniaturisation. Since the earliest computers and the development of the World Wide Web in 1989, the world has seen the power of algorithms and accelerated connectivity transform how we live, relate and work.
Technological development is already significantly affecting the nature of employment with the displacement of established career paths and the demand for particular and new skill sets. While it is not possible to predict the shape of the emerging job market with any certainty, it is clear that the availability of occupations that are open to digitisation will diminish while those that complement and make use of the digital world will grow (Cowan, 2014). Experience suggests that while innovation displaces existing jobs, it also creates new occupations, making fears about longer-term mass unemployment less compelling. However, even if such an optimistic assumption proves correct, there will be an inevitable gap between displacement and replacement with major implications for those affected. Frey (2019) highlights the risks to society and even democracy associated with ‘the increasing divide between winners and losers from automation’ (page 343). We need to explore the extent to which education can help to mitigate these short-term effects. If we cannot predict the requirements of future jobs, can we nonetheless help young people to understand the processes that are shaping their lives and promote their capacity to engage positively with change?
The term ‘globalisation’ captures the competing pressures of a world that is increasingly interdependent and interconnected and yet at the same time highly competitive. Individual countries can no longer feel insulated from developments elsewhere in the world; one country’s energy consumption, for example, has consequences far beyond its own borders. Global companies have maximised value by creating international supply chains, drawing on assets of labour and expertise wherever they can contribute most efficiently. For countries the result is constant pressure to compete for investment while for individuals sources of employment become increasingly transient. Long-term careers in a single company or particular line of work are being overtaken to an increasing extent by the ‘gig economy’. The prize lies in high value occupations requiring personal and collective investment in innovation, creativity and learning.
At the same time, we are seeing changing patterns of migration, partly reflecting the mobility of expertise, partly movement to accessible and more attractive sources of employment and partly displacement of people in the face of disruptive elements such as conflict or compromised availability of basic natural resources. Education systems are struggling to respond quickly to an increasingly multi-cultural society and shifting demands for expertise.
These twin pressures of globalisation and technological development, further accentuated by the current pandemic, introduce unprecedented levels of uncertainty about how today’s young people will earn a living. But increased connectivity also introduces further pressures on our lives individually, socially and as citizens. Digital social media expand opportunities, removing barriers of geography and time in human interaction, but they also introduce fresh concerns about privacy, bullying abuse, exploitation and mental health.
Digital connectivity will make more participatory forms of democracy more possible or even more likely, giving rise to important questions about systems of governance, political cultures and the nature of citizenship in the future. For example, the issue of sustainability in the face of resource depletion and climate change has major ethical and value implications requiring measured consideration of often competing priorities. Autocracy thrives by providing simplistic answers to complex questions. Access to information and opportunities to voice opinions are limitless but tests of truth are much more elusive.
Taken together, these and other engines of disruptive change pose questions about the role of education in helping young people to navigate and contribute to an increasingly uncertain world. How far will today’s assumptions about schooling continue to hold firm in a world characterised by volatility, complexity and unpredictability? Should we see schools as islands of stability, passing on established cultures and ways of thinking through a curriculum that has been in place for decades? Or should schools be incubators of creativity that foster abilities associated with connecting and applying knowledge and discernment in identifying and evaluating its integrity? In reality, they must be all of these things. What is needed is open and informed debate about the purposes of schooling and a determination to keep reflecting and learning if schools are to continue to serve the long-term interests of our young people.
Revisiting the purposes of schooling – the UK context
In the UK, the period from 1870 through to the mid-1970s saw an almost unquestioned faith in the power of education to drive personal, societal and economic wellbeing. The developing political goal throughout that period envisaged as many young people as possible spending longer in school and mo...
