Schooling for Tomorrow

The Schooling for Tomorrow programme is a major project being undertaken by the Education and Research Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The aim of the project is to develop futures thinking in education and, as well as covering schools, it is also concerned with the learning and experiences that happen outside the classroom.

It is an international project whose origins go back to 1996 with an invitation to OECD by ministers of education to work on the future of schooling. Now the project is in an ambitious third phase, widening the international participation, distilling and drawing together the emerging knowledge, and developing user-friendly materials. The project has also engaged in new work on models of learning and innovation and will revisit trends and scenarios that have been considered in the past.

An International Japan/OECD Seminar on "Futures Thinking for Education: Policy, Leadership and the Teaching Profession" was held in Hiroshima on 6th and 7th November 2006 organised jointly by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT), Hiroshima University and the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI).

The Seminar explored the connections between futures thinking, on the one hand, and governance, policy formulation and decision-making in education, on the other. It looked at three key themes:

1. improving strategic policy-making
2. building leadership capacity at school and other levels
3. rethinking the teaching profession and reform of the educational workforce.

Valerie Hannon, one of The Innovation Unit Directors gave a report on the perspective from England. You can download the paper here (PDF - 67 Kb), and for more information about the project as a whole visit the OECD's Schooling for Tomorrow web page.

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