International Day of Education: Trends in education reform in 2024
Today is International Day of Education. Led by the United Nations, on this day every year, people around the world celebrate the role of education in enabling sustainable development and peace. We asked experts for their personal views on what we will see more of across the education reform sector in 2024:
The crucial role of teachers – especially for peace education
This year, UNESCO is dedicating the International Day of Education to the crucial role education and teachers play in countering hate speech.
Yesterday, Jane Mann, Managing Director, Partnership for Education, Cambridge University Press & Assessment joined Bett’s 2024 leadership roundtable on ‘Bridging the global equity gap in education and stemming the teacher retention crisis’:
This year, we need to ramp up efforts to address the teacher retention crisis. Teachers are the most important factor in schools when it comes to influencing student achievement. However, they also have a colossal impact on developing children holistically. We have designed Cambridge’s ‘Positive Peace’ initiative, which evaluates and builds conflict and peace literacy in schools, with school leaders and teachers at its heart. We cannot make vital progress in peace education without trained and supported teachers.
Dominique Slade: Rebooting education to focus on the development of the whole person
One of the lessons of the pandemic was to remind us of the importance of wellbeing as an essential condition for effective learning, and with it a reminder that the purpose of education is more than just imparting knowledge and skills.
In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, one thing only seems certain: the rapid invasion of technology in all aspects of our lives. With the growing ubiquity of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we must reboot education to put human flourishing and human intelligence at its core.
In line with the minimalist credo that ‘less is more’, curricula need to reduce to provide space for the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of young people. Reducing curriculum load is not about ‘dumbing down’; it is about providing space to truly master foundational knowledge and cognitive skills that are essential to educational success; developing critical thinking and independent learning essential to navigate our complex digital world; and about nurturing those qualities that make us humans, empathy, social conscience and ethics, creativity, curiosity, passion.
So, let’s reboot education to focus on the development of competent, confident and happy human beings, capable to thrive in the rapidly changing world they’ll inhabit.
Dominique Slade is the Head of Education Content & Solutions, Partnership for Education at Cambridge University Press & Assessment. She works with governments around the world on education system transformation.
Nhial Deng: In the age of a poly-crisis, we must turn to education for hope
We live in the age of a poly-crisis - multiple catastrophic crises are intertwining globally, disrupting efforts to build a better world and creating systems of oppression.
Education is such a powerful tool that can unlock the doors to a world of unlimited possibilities in science, sustainability, good governance, human rights, gender equality, and poverty alleviation. To put it all together: education is the backbone of the United Nations' sustainable development agenda. With less than seven years to go, we don’t have much time to waste.
This argument does not mean education systems are safe from disruptions by crises. They are not, as we all saw during the Covid-19 pandemic.
For us to continue to envision education as a tool to build a world of justice, equality, and opportunity for all - we must rethink our education systems. University campuses can no longer be places where students just learn the knowledge to succeed in the workplace, but they should make students become good humans above all. Places of learning should equip us with the skills to address social challenges no matter the profession one aspires to pursue.
While we are at it, we must keep inclusion at the centre. Education is a fundamental human right as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and every child everywhere must have the opportunity to learn.
Nhial Deng is a refugee and youth advocate and community activist. In 2023 he won the Chegg.org Global Student Prize, awarded to an exceptional student who has made a real impact on learning, the lives of their peers, and society.
Mehool Sanghrajka MBE: Rethinking EdTech
Few could have imagined in 2020 that the Covid-19 pandemic would be catastrophic for learners globally. The lining to this cloud is that inadvertently, that pandemic may yet be the transformation that education has needed over the past two decades.
Traditionally ministries of education have often sought to extend their own corporate technology to schools; laptops, broadband, ‘office’ tools etc., without necessarily having clarity on learning outcomes beyond ‘building a capable population’. Covid-19 visibly highlighted the lack of digital and pedagogical capability in using these technologies. Access to device and connectivity from home became further barriers, all of which were usually irrelevant in a classroom environment where the whiteboard fallback option was always present.
Now, post Covid-19, it is clear that this must change not only in readiness for another pandemic, but also because these hybrid learning skills are closely related to the hybrid working trend that employers have embraced.
What does this mean for education in 2024 and beyond? Impact and efficacy measurement in technology deployment will become the norm, moving away from corporate technology to education focused solutions, and teacher professional development will be seen as imperative for success.
Mehool Sanghrajka MBE is Founder & Chief Executive of Learning Possibilities, a social enterprise that works to improve teaching and learning using technology.
Lewis Birchon: Calls for change will be front and centre of education policy
2024 is the biggest year for democracy in history. More than 50 countries – including seven of the ten most populous countries in the world – will go to the polls this year.
Manifestos and election promises will be written against the backdrop of a historic average drop in PISA averages in Mathematics and reading caused by disruption during the pandemic, economic challenges around inflation and growth, escalating domestic and international conflicts, and the anxieties and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence and automation.
Whether incumbent or challenger, policymakers will be incentivized to describe what they will do to improve and modernise education.
The challenge for policymakers is to not abandon effective policies in favour of new and untested interventions. To effectively drive improvement, interventions must be based on a full and accurate understanding of the weaknesses in the education system they are intended to address.
Without proper analysis, even the most well-intentioned policy promises may entrench and exacerbate the very problems they are intended to address.
Lewis Birchon is Head of Publishing Solutions, Partnership for Education at Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Lewis manages education system analyses and large-scale publishing programmes with governments across the globe.
Dr Chris Martin: Reckoning with the increasing need for emergency education
In 2024 we will need to reckon more directly with the increasing need for emergency or crisis education. The number of displaced children will likely reach 50 million this year, if it has not done so already. Spikes in warfare and oppression, alongside the increasing impacts of environmental catastrophes, mean that education is being increasingly disrupted for an increasingly large number of learners.
The vulnerabilities of education systems to crises are typically located in their exposure to environmental or climate or humanitarian disasters. However, we will also need to deal with the lasting impacts of these events as systems return (or fail to return) to ‘normal’. Transitional or intermediate types of crisis – while infrastructure is restored, wider economic suffering persists, or the effects of depopulation are reconciled - will need to be dealt with by education leaders.
So, what is the solution? Increasing emphasis on establishing the preparedness of national systems will help mediate negative effects of crisis and hasten recovery, potentially in contrast to increased atomization and personalization of learning. We will also need to make a stronger case that education is not just a personal or national asset, but a global, species-level priority.
Dr Christopher Martin is Senior Data and Impact Manager at Cambridge University Press & Assessment. He is a social anthropologist and education researcher.
Christine Özden: Going further and faster on climate education
The below trend is an excerpt from Christine’s reflections on COP 28 on cambridge.org, read the full article here
As 2023 is confirmed as the hottest year on record, the need to go further and faster on climate action in 2024 intensifies. Education has a vital role to play.
Climate education should be integrated into all stages of school curricula. It will help young people understand the climate crisis and its inter-connected nature, play a role in tackling it, and equip youth with the skills needed in changing economies. It’s up to governments and organisations to commit, collaborate and communicate on climate education. Dealing with climate change is a multi-generational endeavour. Climate education must be central to that.
Christine Özden is Global Director for Climate Education at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, driving forward Cambridge’s commitment to bringing quality climate education to more people around the world.
AI in education in 2024
When reaching out to a select group of education leaders and researchers across the world for their top trend for the year ahead, almost half mentioned an opportunity or challenge related to AI.
In the second instalment of this series on what to look out for in 2024, we’ll share their insights on:
- revolutionising personalised learning,
- student and teacher wellbeing,
- greater discussions around the ethics of using AI in education,
- learning how to ask the right questions and
- accentuating innovation and creativity.
