Future challenges in education

I have just listened to a very inspiring speech by Jim Knight the Secretary of State for Schools and Learners in the UK. Click on the speech link to access menu for this. Interestingly, this speech delivered last year at the 5th national conference of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in the UK, touches on something we really all should keep high in our consciousness and that is this. We have seen unprecedented change in the labour market in the world in the last 10 years in that many of the jobs in the 'new' commerce did not exist when the people who now fill these jobs went to school and as Jim Knight rightly says, many of the jobs that will exist in the next 10 years we do not know about yet. The challenge is how do we educate our young people for these 'new' jobs. Are we robustly addressing this issue? For one I do not see a great deal of evidence for this. This is I believe primarily because we do not know what these jobs will be and secondly our systems of school education are maybe not as flexible and adaptable as they may need to be. We are obligated if not legally then morally to give every child the knowledge skills to survive and thrive in the new global world. I question whether our educators are clever and flexible enough to adapt to this issue. The more we are able to work across borders in education by forming global partnerships to expand and adapt our processes of educating young people the more successful we are likely to be. That is why at ICG we are working relentlessly and with enormous vigour to promote cross border partnerships in education.