• New report identifies eight critical shifts in learning content and experiences to define high quality education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• World Economic Forum selects 16 schools as models pioneering the future of education, reaching nearly 2.5 million children worldwide with new learning approaches
• World Economic Forum launches Education 4.0, an initiative that aims to mobilize key stakeholders around new models, new standards and momentum for action to transform the future of education
Geneva, Switzerland, January 15, 2020 : The World Economic Forum identified 16 Schools of the Future – defined as schools, school systems and programmes – that are playing a critical role in preparing the global citizens and work forces of the future. Located in five continents as well as in developing and developed economies, and collectively reaching nearly 2.5 million children, these schools represent public-private collaborations to improve education systems with strategies including aligning curricula with future skills needs, training teachers in the latest industry practices and providing hands-on education experiences for students.
A new white paper, Schools of the Future: Defining New Models of Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, published today, outlines a framework to define quality education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Education 4.0 – and shares key features from innovative education models. In parallel, the Forum is launching the Education 4.0 initiative to mobilize multi stakeholder collaborations to accelerate the scaling up of best practices and enable system-level transformation in education.
Defining Education 4.0
Through a consultative process with educators, policy-makers, business leaders, EdTech developers and experts, the World Economic Forum has proposed eight shifts within education content and experiences to define quality education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The framework serves as an important first step in setting the direction of innovation in education and reviving it as a means to improved social mobility and inclusion.
According to the report, innovation-driven economies and increasingly interconnected and interdependent societies demand that children develop four key skill sets: global citizenship, innovation and creativity, technology and interpersonal skills. Fostering these skills will require a shift towards radical new approaches to learning that are personalized and self-paced, accessible and inclusive, problem-based and collaborative as well as lifelong and student-driven.
Schools of the Future
The Green School (Indonesia) : This school has a wall-less, open-air design that enables students to be directly connected to the surrounding nature. The school’s physical layout supports its curricular focus on sustainability and real-world application. For example, students at the Green School have designed and built a usable bamboo bridge over a river and a new sustainable hydropower system for the school. Today the school uses just 10% of the energy consumed by other schools.
The Kakuma Project, Innovation Lab Schools (Kenya) : Although currently in the process of building a physical school for this programme, the Kakuma project has already created a movement of 375 educators throughout 75 countries who provide lessons to children at the Kakuma Refugee camp via Skype. A foldable solar panel is used to ensure that the camp has a sustainable source of energy to support distance learning. The programme also trains local teachers in the implementation of a new curriculum based on the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Knowledge Society (Canada) : This after school programme was designed to mirror the learning and working environments of major technology companies, exposing students to the most cutting-edge innovations. The programme partners with businesses to enable their students to consult private-sector leaders about real challenges within the company. By the end of the programme, every student has developed their own disruptive company.
Kabakoo Academies (Mali) : Kabakoo works closely with local businesses to help their students identify issues within the community that require innovative and urgent action, helping them to rapidly develop market-ready prototypes through a sustainability lens. For example, since the programme’s launch in 2018 students have designed and implemented a system for monitoring the air quality in Bamako, which includes installing air monitors throughout the city and using an online platform to track trends.
TEKY STEAM (Viet Nam) : This network of labs in Viet Nam offers children ages 6-18 courses in technology, including programming, 3D printing, robotics and virtual reality. It is the first of its kind in Viet Nam and students have already won a number of national and international competitions in coding, robotics and other STEM fields.
Accelerated Work Achievement and Readiness Programme (Indonesia) : This programme collaborates with more than 65 businesses in the country to provide workplace readiness opportunities for students, starting at high school age. The programme’s pilot trained more than 4,000 students, 98% of which were placed in on-the-job training and one-half of whom are already employed.
iEARN (Spain) : With headquarters based in Spain, iEARN is a global platform for exchange between more than 2 million children worldwide. Children collaborate in global teams on projects promoting global citizenship through iEARN’s project-based learning framework and digital platform, which connects children in classrooms in various parts of the world.
South Tapiola High School (Finland) : This school focuses on fostering independent thinking, while also helping students develop the interpersonal skills needed for the future. Each student goes through the School’s Young Entrepreneurship Programme, in which students collaborate in groups over the course of a year to design and create their own businesses.
Pratham’s Hybrid Learning Programme (India) : There are no teachers in this programme, which involves more than 90,000 children in India. Instead, local volunteers act as facilitators for entirely student-led learning. Pratham provides a bank of project ideas related to health, the arts, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, and student groups choose which projects to pursue.
Anji Play (China) : This curriculum – used throughout one school district in China – focuses on tapping into children’s natural curiosity and allowing them to learn entirely through play. Teachers create an environment for children to self-direct play at their own pace, conduct observations of the children’s interactions and guide reflection discussions after play experiences.
Prospect Schools (USA) : This network of schools was designed with a focus on inclusion. Each class is designed to be diverse and inclusive, ensuring a balance of student race and ethnicity, fluency in English, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The school hires teachers to mirror the diversity of their student body and teachers attend regular equality and inclusion trainings throughout the year.
Tallahassee Community College, Digital Rail Project (USA) : Learning in this programme takes place in 8-metre long trailers. These are fully equipped with the latest technologies, including robotics, 3D printing and virtual reality, and deliver STEM learning to Tallahassee’s lowest-income neighborhoods. Children receive digital skills passports, which allow them to connect the skills learned in any given lesson with future careers.
Innova Schools (Peru) : This network of schools in Peru and Mexico uses a blended learning model to tailor education for each student. Approximately 70% of student learning takes place through collaborative projects, while the rest is dedicated to independent education via online platforms. The school’s physical spaces were designed to support new approaches to learning and include features such as movable walls.
British School Muscat (Oman) : This school’s curriculum focuses on discovery learning, an approach where multiple subjects are integrated into collaborative projects focused on the experience rather than the final product or answer. This interdisciplinary approach enables students to draw interlinkages between various content areas and focus on the specific skills to apply that content to the real world. The school is collaborating with the Government of Oman to train teachers throughout the country in this methodology.
Skills Builder Partnership (United Kingdom) : This partnership of more than 700 organizations and schools is built around a co-designed framework for fostering the skills of the future to ensure alignment in the approaches used to foster those skills at school and in the workplace. Teachers in 12 countries are currently using the Skills Builder framework and similar approaches to foster those future skills. Each student in the partnership participates in work-based education experiences in which private-sector partners also employ the same skills framework.
Skilling for Sustainable Tourism (Ecuador) : This programme engages Ecuador’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Tourism, tourism industry leaders and local schools to design education that directly contributes to shaping the future of the sustainable tourism industry, a sector that employs a high number of youth. A steering committee of private-sector leaders supports alignment between the programme’s curricula and future employment trends.
Activating Education 4.0
Systems-level change is needed to realize Education 4.0 for all children. There are more than 260 million children out of school today, and an additional 617 million children in school, but not learning adequately. Even those enrolled in relatively well-performing education systems are often missing the core tenets of future-ready education. Without urgent action to address these gaps, more than 1.5 billion children could be left unprepared to fulfill their potential by 2030, posing risks for future productivity and equality. The Schools of the Future can serve as inspiration for leapfrogging to the education of the future for those children who lack access to schooling, and as a vision for changing content and experiences for children currently enrolled in schools, system-level change is needed to realize Education 4.0 for all students.
To facilitate the transition to the education of the future, the World Economic Forum is launching the Education 4.0 initiative as one of five Forum-led flagship initiatives of the Reskilling Revolution platform, which aims to provide better jobs, education and skills to 1 billion people by 2030. The initiative invites education ministers, finance ministers and chief executive officers from business who are champions of education as well as other stakeholders to join the Forum platform to define and implement a holistic action agenda to realize Education 4.0.
“There is clear consensus that education systems must be updated to ensure children become productive, innovative and civic-minded members of society. Educators, education and finance ministries, and private-sector leaders have a moral and economic responsibility to co-create and implement new models to ensure that all children are prepared for the future. This is why the World Economic Forum is launching the Education 4.0 initiative and developing a community of leading champions for mobilizing change on this agenda,” said Saadia Zahidi, Head of the Centre for the New Economy and Society and Managing Director of the World Economic Forum.
The initiative aims to mobilize key stakeholders in transitioning to Education 4.0 and reaching 100 million children and teachers by designing and implementing the schools of the future; empowering teachers to lead the education transformation; codifying and scaling up best practices through policy and increasing connectivity between schools and school systems for global best practice exchange.
“Education 4.0 and the Schools of the Future provide great guiding principles for creating learning environments that support children’s future needs. Teachers are the key to unlocking this new type of learning and require targeted support from public- and private-sector leaders to make this vision a reality”, said Andria Zafirakou, Teacher, Arts and Textile, Alperton Community School, 2018 Global Teacher Prize Winner.
Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society
The Schools of the Future Report and the Education 4.0 initiative are part of the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society. The platform provides the opportunity to advance prosperous, inclusive and equitable economies and societies. It focuses on co-creating a new vision in three interconnected areas: growth and competitiveness; education, skills and work; and equality and inclusion. Working together, stakeholders deepen their understanding of complex issues, shape new models and standards and drive scalable, collaborative action for systemic change.
More than 100 of the world’s leading companies and 100 international, civil society and academic organizations use the platform to promote new approaches to competitiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution economy. They also deploy education and skills for tomorrow’s workforce, are creating a pro-worker and pro-business agenda for jobs, and are looking to integrate equality and inclusion into the new economy.
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 will take place on 21-24 January 2020 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The meeting brings together more than 3,000 global leaders from politics, government, civil society, academia, the arts and culture as well as the media. Convening under the theme, Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World, participants will focus on defining new models for building sustainable and inclusive societies in a plurilateral world.
The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting brings together governments, international organizations, business, civil society, media, culture, foremost experts and the young generation from all over the world, at the highest level and in representative ways. It engages some 50 heads of state and government, more than 300 ministerial-level government participants, and business representation at the chief executive officer and chair level.
Read the report here
