Many of us stayed up last Saturday evening watching the election results unfold. Now we’re trying to make sense of what they might mean – not just for the next three years, but for the future of our society.
My particular interest is education. Whoever is in government, we need to look beyond changes designed mainly to win votes. The future of our nation is at stake, and so is the future of the young people in our schools right now.
I was thinking about that this morning as the year draws to a close, a time when schools will be preparing prize-givings and farewells for students graduating and heading into the next stage of their lives. It’s a moment to celebrate what they’ve achieved – and to ask a bigger question: what futures are they stepping into, and how well have we prepared them?
For decades, we’ve heard that the world of work is changing, and that the pathways our young people will follow are unlikely to look like the ones we knew. Yet education can still seem caught between two familiar poles – making space for new aspirations and ways of learning, while continuing to prepare students for predictable careers and employment in someone else’s enterprise.
We can’t assume that what worked in the past will be enough to help young people thrive in the future. Nor can we keep responding to today’s challenges with the same thinking that helped create them. Climate and environmental pressures, the health of our democracy, geo-political tensions, artificial intelligence, employment and wellbeing all demand more of us than familiar answers. That challenge is visible in political debates here and overseas, where short-term fixes can crowd out the deeper conversations we need.
So what should education be for in a changing world? And how do we make sure our answers start with young people – not with the needs of the economy alone, or a narrow idea of growth that concentrates its benefits among those who already have the most?
Later this week I’ll be speaking with deputy principals and assistant principals at a conference in Auckland. We’ll explore a debate that is often framed as a tension between the science of learning and relational pedagogy. One side is associated with explicit instruction, cognitive architecture, memory and evidence-informed teaching. The other is associated with relationships, belonging, learner agency, identity and the social construction of meaning.
These ideas don’t have to become competing camps. The important question is how our understanding of learning, relationships and evidence can help us create the conditions young people need to learn, belong and shape their futures. Any conversation about teaching and learning should keep that purpose in view.
The futures we’re considering shouldn’t simply reproduce the experiences we had ourselves. And education shouldn’t serve an economic growth mindset that privileges the wealthy while leaving others to adapt to the consequences. It should help every young person build the knowledge, capabilities, relationships and agency to contribute to a society in which more people can flourish.
That takes more than cosmetic change. It takes honest, far-reaching conversation – and a willingness to put young people at the centre of the choices we make now.
That is why I’ve agreed to take part in an upcoming webinar hosted by the Aotearoa Educators’ Collective, in conversation with Anthony Mackay, founder and co-chair of the Global Education Leaders’ Partnership, among his many other roles.
Our theme is “Building a shared understanding of education.” To be clear, this is not a political statement. It’s a genuine attempt to explore the purpose of education in our modern world, and what we could or should be doing to re-imagine it for the future.
I’ll be drawing on the twelve challenges I set out in my Beyond the Ballot Box paper – challenges that I believe any government, of any stripe, needs to address if we want a world-class system that serves all of our young people, not just some of them. They’re interconnected, and they demand the kind of sustained, joined-up commitment that doesn’t fit neatly into a three-year electoral cycle.
Join us: Wednesday 11 November, 7.30pm [register here]
Whether you’re a teacher, a leader, a board member or simply someone who cares about what comes next, I’d love you to be part of the conversation. Because the future we’re considering isn’t ours to replicate. It belongs to the young people in our schools right now – and they deserve to be at the centre of our thinking.
Further Reading
- Beyond the Ballot Box – 12 Challenges the next government cannot ignore
- Future-Ready Capabilities – 6 capabilities we must see our young people develop in order to thrive into the future
- Purpose before Policy – exploring the purpose of education in the modern world
- Know where the levers are – thinking about where the levers for change lie in our education system
- Foundations to Futures – rethinking literacy learning for tomorrow’s learners
