A New Education Story

Education systems around the world are at a crossroads; a moment of huge challenge and opportunity when, perhaps more than at any other time in living memory,1 decisions made now about what happens next for learning, will have deep and lasting effects for the future.

In 2021, education systems3  around the world began to emerge from a global pandemic that created the worst crisis in learning in a century.4 

The individual, societal and economic impacts of this mass interruption to learning will take years to make themselves fully felt. In many parts of the world the pandemic resulted in impacts for children way beyond education, such as increases in early marriage and child labour, trafficking and displacement.5  In the short term, though some children, families and educators discovered new ways of learning, many children lost months of learning progress and fewer completed secondary education.6  Many children’s mental health and wellbeing suffered under lockdown7  and in response to adversity, personal grief and economic hardship brought about by the pandemic.

The drive to restore and reinstate what was there before the pandemic is understandable, when trauma and uncertainty have been such a widely shared experience.

The education workforce, celebrated and appreciated during the pandemic, were nevertheless depleted and exhausted by its demands.9  Parents greeted school reopenings with relief and enthusiasm as a chance to return to work and society. Children were happy to be back amongst their friends and learning again.

However, undeniable inequalities that existed in learning were also massively accelerated10  by the pandemic. In many places, gaps widened;11  progress was halted or reversed;12  and the impact of poverty amplified,13  adversely affecting millions of children - and laid bare for everyone to see.

How can we simply go back?

Although it undoubtedly sent shockwaves across education systems,15 many of the challenges the pandemic raised - and the creative solutions that arose to meet them - were far from new or unknown.

There have been calls to reimagine learning16 17 18  for many years and these have grown in urgency as the long-anticipated impacts of major social and economic trends, technological advances, shifting geopolitical landscapes, climate change and increasing inequality,19  have begun to take effect.

At the heart of calls for change are shared questions about what the future holds: What purposes do learning and education systems need to serve if humanity and our planet are to flourish? What should learning and education systems look like, if we are to live lives that have meaning for the individual and significance in the world, and to work together to solve our greatest problems?20 

There is also a growing global consensus about the shifts that are needed in how learning happens, if education is to meet these purposes.

Learning that meets these goals needs to be more diverse, more individualised and more learner-centred.22  It needs to be more multi-disciplinary and connected to life beyond schools: to family and community; to meaningful work and to the digital world. Learning needs to attend more to the social and emotional development of children and young people, their empathy, their compassion and their ability to form positive relationships.23  Post-pandemic, where learners are struggling to come to terms with their experience and loss.24 

Critically, there is also agreement that learning and education need to offer every child - not just some children - the chance to reach their unique potential and further, that learning and education should become solutions to tackling inequality, rather than part of the problem.

It is perhaps this purpose that will prompt the most urgent and fundamental shifts.

To reimagine learning - sustainably and at scale - the education systems within which learning takes place need to be not just reformed, but transformed: not just improved but redesigned.

Many education systems are in the process of continuous reform, in which efforts are made to improve efficiency, effectiveness and equity, but which largely keep the existing system and goals in place. Transformation of the kind witnessed during the pandemic, by contrast, involves both a shift in the dominant logic of a system and for the effects of that shift to be experienced at scale.

Transformation is required if education systems are to adapt to the new challenges and opportunities facing young people and society; the third horizon in an emerging - and uncertain - future.26 

While it has been a source of major disruption to learning, the Covid-19 pandemic has also been a stimulus for innovation in education systems and has grown demand for mainstreaming new ideas and practice, which were previously found only at the margins.27  Adaptations made by educators, parents and communities during school closures have demonstrated the possibility and the benefits of reimagining learning.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rapid expansion in the use of digital resources and platforms in education systems which, before the pandemic, were simply not ready to embrace digital learning.28 

Perhaps even more important, the pandemic has prompted recognition of the value of relationships, critical for engaging learners effectively30 and for building resilience in the face of adversity.31  The relationships between educators, learners, their families and communities - the people who are at the heart of learning32  will be fundamental in any deliberations about where education systems should go next.33 

Education systems are inherently complex, deeply connected to - and interdependent with - people systems (family and community) and other systems (business and the economy, politics). They loom large in the public consciousness and carry huge historical and cultural significance.34 

It is perhaps unsurprising that even relatively small changes can be hard to implement, and the realisation that education systems can be - must be - transformed for learning to be reimagined, is daunting to say the least.

However, viewed another way complexity and interdependence can be seen as advantages, as assets, in education transformation.

Recent work, inspired by the late Donella Meadows,35  an American environmental scientist and pioneer in the field of system dynamics, has revealed fresh insight into how complex systems like education resist transformation by accommodating and adjusting to change at a superficial level without making any fundamental shifts.36 37 38  This helps to explain how it can feel for people in education systems that everything is changing all the time, but that nothing really important ever does.

Meadows identified 12 levers - places to intervene in a system - that can bring about system transformation. Education reform efforts on the whole concern themselves with the practical levers, which can be helpful for improvement but are ultimately weak and leave the system itself largely unchanged.

If system transformation is the goal then work needs to happen at the points of stronger leverage, which concern culture, beliefs and values, and which require a very different approach.

Transformation requires work deep within the system.40  It is a deeply human endeavor.41  It requires understanding the forces at the heart of education systems, to name and challenge those that cause systems to resist change, despite frequent, well planned and richly resourced attempts to deliver it.

Together these three drivers begin to indicate a theory of action, directing leaders, funders and decision makers to the places to intervene in education systems at sufficient depth to bring about fundamental and lasting changes.

It is axiomatic that action should be at the heart of a theory of action, but this is not always the case. Theoretical models, helpful though they may be, are often just that - theoretical - and the work to make the big ideas and big challenges they advance actionable is left for another day, another report.

Challenged by partners to go further on this occasion - to bring the theory of action to life - each driver comprises a handful of actions that might be taken to bring about transformation, along with stories from the real world; places and organisations where progress towards transformation is being made.

We have been selective. There are many actions that could and are being taken, in service of transformation in education systems around the world. In the spirit of this work, we have focused on points of high leverage and deep impact, indicated by the research and evidence shared by partners and in the real world stories of transformation.

On the pages that follow, we examine how these three drivers work, together and separately, to bring about education system transformation, and we pose challenging questions for reflection and discussion in your context.

Step into almost any school in almost any country and you will find skilled, caring and committed educators creating a welcoming and stimulating learning environment that nurtures and challenges children and young people who are full of talent, energy and curiosity.

Stick around for long enough and you will also notice how often this happens despite the pressures and incentives of the education system within which the school sits, and not because of it.

Wait a while longer and you might see those pressures begin to constrain how, when and where learning happens, to damage learning relationships and the culture of the school community, to frustrate parents, exhaust educators and to disengage learners.

Education systems are designed to deliver very specific outcomes - basic skills for many, exam success and higher education for some; safe supervision of children and young people while enabling their parents to work; and the transmission of cultural norms and values that govern how children and young people should behave in the world now, and as adults.

Opportunities to learn and practise sports, developing artistic appreciation and expression and enjoying the society of their peers are also important functions of education. Its purpose, however, is to use examination and accreditation to determine what roles children and young people will take in their country’s future, and whether and how they will contribute to - and benefit from - its wealth and progress.

Stakeholders in learning and education - in particular educators, parents and learners - are rarely if ever asked if they see the purpose of education this way.44 

If education systems are to truly transform then different outcomes - new purposes - need to be agreed by a wider group of stakeholders, in the context of a frank appraisal of the challenges of the future and transparency about the shortcomings of current systems.

To change the purpose of education means challenging the collective assumptions that inform and reinforce the current purpose and making explicit new assumptions that do the same for the new purpose.

Education systems are held in place by a vast array of collective assumptions - widely held beliefs - about how the world works; assumptions that often go, not just unquestioned, but entirely unnoticed.46 

To challenge collective assumptions requires first to reveal them, then to question their legitimacy and challenge their power, for instance to reinforce inequality or prevent progress.

For instance, the collective assumption that only a select few children are capable of high achievement47  persists in education systems around the world, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.48  In the context of this assumption, one purpose of education systems - finding out who the “smart” children are, as defined by existing, often narrow measures, and preparing them for higher education and professional careers and leadership thereafter - makes perfect sense.49 

However this is just one of many myths that persist in education systems. Other assumptions - that poverty is an insurmountable barrier to learning for instance, or that some countries have better cultures for learning than others - are equally false.50 

Challenging - and changing - collective assumptions is a developmental journey, not a technical one. This is hard because it requires people to confront fears, biases, or hidden commitments that they didn’t even know they had, and that might be serving their interests in ways that make them uncomfortable.51 

However, myths and assumptions like this have to be debunked2  because they underpin and justify a whole set of arrangements in education systems - standardised testing, ‘ability’ groupings, timetabling and the subject choices available to children to name a few. These are the very arrangements that reinforce inequalities. They are the forces buried deep in education systems that ensure systems deliver on their purpose: to filter the best performers based on their intake of standardized material.53 

What would an education system look like that was underpinned by different assumptions, for instance, that not just a select few children, but all children, were capable of high achievement? How would that change people’s view of the purpose of learning?

It is striking how often people feel themselves to be in the minority - that they believe they feel or want x and everyone else wants y.54 55  It can make people stay silent on even passionately held desires and opinions.

This matters because a parent’s or educator’s belief that their view about learning and education differs from others’ prevents them from finding and connecting with people who might share their beliefs. A misalignment or a lack of communication of beliefs and values around the education purpose is a barrier to successful system transformation.56 

In a recent survey of parents and teachers in 10 countries, The Center for Universal Education at Brookings found that the majority of both parents and educators think that children’s social and emotional development is the most important purpose of education, but that each group believes the other is more focused on academics than they actually are.

The same is also true of how and where learning happens. Both educators and parents would, for the most part, prefer interactive, experiential, and social pedagogical methods. Yet, parents often overestimate educators’ focus on academics.57 

During the pandemic learners and educators had autonomy and agency to take charge of their learning to explore new ideas and experiences like never before. New interests and passions emerged for many students and teachers.75  Learning that connects to learners’ interests and passions is engaging and motivating, with implications for achievement within the current system.76 

Agency is also at the heart of processes to transform learning and education. Agency - for learners and educators - matters, because it is their greatest opportunity to influence transformation.

Further, whereas agency alone might lead to fragmentation and idiosyncrasy, collaborative agency, or co-agency,78  connects learners and educators in a shared endeavour. Co-agency implies the effects of the learning environment on learners’ sense of agency, noticing the importance of a collaborative culture and the capacity and willingness of individuals and institutions to see the world from different perspectives.79 

Learners, in the learning they design and choose for themselves, point the way to learning that is relevant and engaging for them. Educators, innovating in their practice, demonstrate the art of the possible in new forms of pedagogy and assessment.

While it might be hard to envisage transforming education systems one classroom at a time, inspiring educators and engaged and talented learners are nevertheless, together, reimagining learning every day.

Whereas transforming education systems in all their complexity might feel overwhelming and appear unachievable, nurturing this kind of local innovation does not. And local innovation, at scale, can become system transformation.

For innovations to move beyond the level of the individual and the classroom, people throughout the system - policy makers, system leaders, school leaders, as well as educators and learners - need to be encouraged and supported in developing the mindsets and skill sets to evolve system culture that honours the agency and co-agency of learners and educators.81 

Learning is essentially a lifelong endeavor, where employers, community members, as well as young people and educators shape an ever-expanding curriculum.82 

The pandemic shattered the illusion that schools and colleges are the only places where learning happens, and politicians, administrators and experts are the only people who can make decisions about learning.

Of course this was never actually the case, but it took Covid to break formal education’s near monopoly on access to learning expertise and resources, which had previously served in many places to marginalise home, peer and community learning and other informal learning opportunities.83 

When schools closed, some system leaders scrambled to make digital technology and remote learning resources universally available, many for the very first time.85 

Meanwhile parents - frequently overlooked protagonists in education86  - and educators began to share information and to innovate together, not just schooling, but how to work, parent, and practise physical and mental well-being, as well as support their children’s learning.87 

In communities where learners did not have access to remote learning, parents and educators worked together to ensure learners’ fundamental safety, wellbeing and access to basic nutrition.88 

Elsewhere, institutions, community groups, tech companies and civic organisations mobilised resources as part of a broad and impressive humanitarian effort which, as well as providing laptops and data for online schooling, also created a plethora of new content and learning opportunities far beyond core curriculum.89 

Communities coming together demonstrated what happens when a wider group of people with new ideas, resources, opportunity and need are given the chance to reimagine learning, and when power is divested from the highest levels of government to the local level, where there is better understanding of what the needs are and what solutions can be workable.90 

It is striking how diverse learning became in communities where parents, learners and educators had the scope, conditions and resources to co-design learning outside of the constraints of their formal education systems. In addition to remote schooling there appeared powerful, complementary learning opportunities that connected children and communities through film-making, storytelling and exhibitions of artwork in house and apartment windows; in online choirs, bands and orchestras; in no-contact treasure hunts and other outdoor activities; in yoga, mindfulness and health and fitness classes; in bake-offs and craft clubs and so on.91 

However, just as with access to remote schooling, these rich and engaging opportunities were really only available to the more privileged learners, those for example with access to outside space and with parents or family working from home or furloughed.

This serves as a critical reminder that developments that seek to engage parents and communities in education must be cognisant of the need to grow parents’ opportunities and confidence to help their child learn, to avoid exacerbating further global learning inequities to the detriment of the most vulnerable.92 

If new and different people are to be involved in learning design and decision making, new and different structures and tools are also required, which enable, for instance, learners and parents to share their ideas, views and experiences as part of a broader, more inclusive debate about education transformation. For example, young people who have dropped out of formal education have a very specific perspective and experience to offer and might helpfully be included in an expanded group of stakeholders to enrich decision making,94  but rarely are.

Globally, strategies that go beyond engaging parents and communities in improving existing education systems are few and far between. However there are successful examples, for instance parent-focused policy development in Juazeiro do Norte, Brazil; community working groups for educational planning in British Columbia, Canada; and Remake Learning Days, regular parent-focused learning festivals in the USA.95 96 

Successful engagement strategies consider both context - parents’ attitudes to engaging with learning and education vary according to culture and opportunity97  - and gender, ethnic, socio-economic class, and other divisions of power and privilege, to continually check that everyone who wants to can take part, and to avoid reinforcing existing inequalities.

It is impossible to make well-informed decisions without the full range of relevant data and information available, which is what happens when only people and organisations invested in the system’s status quo commission and accumulate data and have access to it.99 

Making data and information more widely available is an excellent first step; however to become useful and actionable, these have to be interpreted, explained and integrated in decision making processes in ways that drive learning and that are meaningful and accessible for those taking part. Most education data are not usually made public, are not disaggregated, and are not in formats that are user friendly.100 

Further, if we are to empower stakeholders, we need to expand the range of data and information that is available to them. Parents may receive information about their own children’s attainment using a very limited range of indicators, most often abstracted grades or levels in unrelated subjects and performance in unseen tests. In some countries, communities may be able to find data about the performance of their local school, again using test results as the main indicator of success or failure in any given reporting period.

To make informed and confident decisions, stakeholders might reasonably ask questions that data like these cannot possibly answer; questions that relate to their values and priorities. How happy/safe/​confident are our children at school? How resilient/​creative/adaptive/​entrepreneurial etc will they become? How is our school preparing our children for the challenges and opportunities of the future? Are they learning what they need to thrive? Is our school fair? Are all our children able to fulfil their individual and collective potential? And so on.

We also need to expand the horizons of those making decisions by connecting with people and places where learning is being reimagined and education systems transformed. It is hard to imagine a radically different future without being able to see and understand what transformed learning and education look like.

So it is unsurprising that, on the rare occasions when they are invited to imagine a different future for learning and education, parents and communities; learners and educators can struggle to see beyond a better, more effective, more technologically enabled version of the learning and education they currently experience.

When the learner is at the centre, it is their strengths and needs, passions and interests that become the focus for transformation, wherever that learner comes from and whatever system they are in.

This vision for learner-centredness goes far beyond traditional practices of differentiation or personalisation. It works at the level of the individual classroom, school and whole education system. It both empowers ambitious and creative educators to make their practice more learner centred in ways that are rewarding for learners and educators, and it challenges decision makers at the system level to transform system structures and processes to serve the needs of all learners.

Learner-centredness is disruptive and has the potential to be transformative because it turns the standardised model of schooling on its head, challenges the assumptions that sit at the heart of education systems and shines a light on the inequality that is baked into them.

External assessment and accreditation are high leverage points of intervention in transforming education systems because they disproportionately affect the learning opportunities that are available to young people in school. In a phenomenon that has been called ‘teaching to the test’ curricula can quickly become unbalanced as externally examined subjects take precedence in timetables and private study, particularly where these feature as indicators on which school performance is judged. The outcomes of assessment and accreditation also have the potential to limit access to future learning and career opportunities for young people who do not ‘pass the test.’

Since external assessment and accreditation are powerful drivers in education systems, they are also a force that can be harnessed to ensure that they drive the system in the ‘right’ direction; serving the purposes of learning and education determined by stakeholders.

New forms of assessment are in widespread use that privilege learner self assessment, involve evaluation by external e.g. industry experts or community leaders, and result in portfolios that evidence both development of competencies over time and diverse knowledge and skills.115 

Technology is also available that can do quick “how are you doing?” checks; individualised micro assessments that provide rapid feedback to help the learning process along.116 

Innovation in standardised tests means that it will be possible, in the next few years, to look way beyond core competencies to evaluate, evidence and benchmark a wider range of skills: collaborative problem solving; creative thinking; global competence; and learning in the digital world.117 

By integrating a wider range of assessments and ways to recognise learning into the learning process, assessment and accreditation can be used to help close equity gaps and to accelerate transformation.

What if we knew, with evidence, not just with belief, that all children can learn and thrive?

What if educators were supported to learn from science to design new learning opportunities that attend to up-to-date insight into how young people learn, develop, grow, and master complex skills?

The science of learning builds on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, brain research and social psychology and offers new opportunities for transforming learning and education systems.119 

There is also growing evidence that learning is enhanced when learners are given opportunity to build on existing knowledge,121  that learner mindset is associated with academic success,122  that learners need to feel seen, safe, and valued to learn,123  and that learners benefit from meaningful, challenging tasks.124 

Elsewhere, research has shown that social emotional skills such as achievement, motivation, responsibility, stress resistance and resilience, curiosity, and meta-cognition are predictive not only of academic outcomes, but life outcomes.125 

COVID-19 reinforced the scientific link between the ability to learn and mental and emotional wellness. In some G20 countries, the number of young people experiencing symptoms of mental ill-health more than doubled during the COVID-10 crisis.126  prompting some jurisdictions to respond by increasing investments in social emotional learning.

Conversely some popular ideas in education, for example, have been found to have little to no evidence. For example, learning styles is a mainstream idea, but there is no evidence that matching learning activities to one’s so-called learning style improves learning.127  What if learning practice was informed by evidence?