Transforming Education for the Next Generation: TE

Transforming Education 

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In a fast-changing, interconnected world, education must change to prepare students for success in life. The modern global economy doesn’t pay you for what you know, because the Internet knows everything. The world economy pays you for what you can do with what you know. Nations that want a knowledge economy are investing to produce students who can intelligently manage and evaluate information and data. They are moving beyond asking whether students can reproduce what they learned in school. They want to know how creatively they can use what they know, and whether they can extrapolate from it and apply their knowledge in another context. Skills such as critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and collaboration are at an increasing premium. 

 “It is critically important to attract good teachers, support and encourage their professionalism, continue to invest in them, and align assessment and rewards to support innovation in teaching.”

Since the first Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study in 2000, we have come a long way in stimulating discussions about how to improve student performance and equity. We see that successful nations and school systems set high expectations for all students. They embrace diversity, and provide a high degree of support for each student. They understand that students learn differently, and really engage with that. Modern learning can no longer be about a one-size-fits-all system but about personalizing learning approaches.

 This requires a very different learning environment, a very different kind of work organization, and a very, very different caliber of teachers. It is critically important to attract good teachers, support and encourage their professionalism, continue to invest in them, and align assessment and rewards to support innovation in teaching. Technology has to be an integral part of the process. Technology allows us to embrace teaching and assessment of entirely new skills that are very important for the 21st century and that you cannot develop in a kind of traditional environment. But technology has to work through teachers. 

Technology can leverage great teaching enormously. But great technology doesn’t replace poor teaching. The challenge is to bring technology into the picture in ways that translate into good teaching and learning. This requires sophisticated public policy, a long-term commitment, and a systematic approach. For school systems, the benchmark for success is no longer to be better than you were last year, but to measure up against the best performing systems in the world. The potential rewards are tremendous. Even modest improvements in student performance can produce hundreds of trillions of dollars over the lifetime of a cohort of students. Civic engagement and volunteerism also depend closely on the skills of citizens. 

In today’s global economy, the consequences for not making progress are increasingly consequential. In the past, if you had low levels of skills, you could still get a decent job with a decent wage. Today, that’s no longer possible. You end up in a race to the bottom. The people at the high end of the skill distribution, on the other hand, have seen dramatically improved wages. The cost of low education performance is very, very high, and the consequences of inequalities in educational outcomes are dramatically widening.