Learning for our future, not the past - ANDREAS SCHLEICHER

Jobs, wealth and individual well-being depend on nothing more than on what people know and what they can do with what they know. But simply providing more of the same education won’t do the trick. Traditional education is at a crossroads. Simply earning a degree no longer guarantees a job, while the unbundling of educational content, delivery and accreditation have created popular alternative paths for acquiring skills and knowledge. We need to conceptualise “skills” in ways that go beyond acquiring a fixed set of tools that help us to solve known problems. Things like curiosity, courage, leadership, resilience or empathy are essential. Flexibility and “learning to learn” matter too. Young people and adults alike need to be equipped with skills that will not only allow for many job changes throughout their lives, but also will enable them to become lifelong learners who can acquire new skills as needed along the way. The lecture will look at the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that are most important now, and how to configure space, time, people and relationships in ways to develop these effectively