Will our education systems meet the challenges of tomorrow’s society? A UK
perspective
Franco-British forum
Introduction
I have been asked to provide a UK perspective on whether our education systems
are fit for purpose for the challenges of tomorrow’s society.
I lead the education team in the UK Government’s Strategy Unit. But I am speaking
in a personal capacity and my comments should not be taken to reflect government
policy.
I will offer my views on four questions:

What are some of the key trends shaping our societies in the coming years?

What are the implications of these trends for our education systems?

How well placed is Britain’s education system to respond to these
implications?

Finally, what might be some key strategic priorities for our education system?
What are the key trends shaping tomorrow’s society?
I will be relatively brief on this question, as it has been addressed by other speakers.
The first trend I would highlight is the changing global environment in which our
economies operate. Rapidly emerging economies like China and India have doubled
the global workforce and are quickly improving their own skill profiles. Changes in
policy and substantial falls in the costs of transport and communications are
dramatically increasing international flows of goods, services, capital, people and
ideas.
These trends are increasing the importance of skills to advanced economies as a
source of comparative advantage and to individuals in those economies as a means
of remaining employable in the face of rapid change.
The rise in returns to skills has also been driven by technology. Increasingly
pervasive information and communications technology seems to have raised the
productivity of skilled workers much more than unskilled workers.
And this link has led to a key social trend - a rise in inequality of income and wealth,
which has been particularly pronounced in Anglo-Saxon economies.
As Jo Blanden has discussed, in Britain income mobility also appears to have fallen.
And more than a third of intergenerational immobility seems to be explained by the
role of education (mediated through family background).
Wider changes in communities and society, with increasing diversity of household
and family structures and increased immigration, have increased pressures on
cohesion and our capacity to live well together.
The ratio of workers to retired people has fallen, increasing the importance of the
productivity of those in work.
And finally, as living standards rise and private sector services offer greater levels of
personal choice and control, so expectations of public services are rising.
What does all this mean for our education systems?
Well I think there are at least four clear implications – though each with important
caveats.
First, education & skills are more important than ever before to meeting our economic
and social objectives. Education is the single best route for raising long-term
economic performance and equalising life chances, as well as increasing tolerance,
civic responsibility and happiness. The caveat is that we should not pretend that
schools can achieve everything on their own.
Second, in this century it will not be sufficient to educate the elite, our education
system needs to deliver for as near to 100% of the population as possible.
Recent OECD evidence has confirmed that average wage returns from degrees have
not fallen even as the number of graduates has risen – confirming the persistence of
returns to investment in education.
The caveat here is that good education for all can’t be at the expense of excellence
for the most able. High-level education and skills remain crucial to innovation and
leadership and therefore productivity as well as to solving our society’s social
challenges.
Third, it will not be enough for our schools and colleges only to develop the traditional
academic and cognitive skills. Young people will need non-cognitive personal and
social skills like creativity, the ability to work in a team and learning how to learn.
This demand is also born out by surveys of employers.
Again this doesn’t mean abandoning traditional subjects or literacy and numeracy,
but ensuring they are developed as part of a broad curriculum.
Fourth, and perhaps most controversially, we will not achieve our goals for children
without policy approaches that extend outside the classroom into family life. Just 14%
of a child’s time is spent in school. Parental aspirations are crucial and the level of
parental engagement in learning is the most powerful predictor of achievement.
So a 21st century education policy shouldn’t stop at the school gates – but neither
should we forget that it in schools where we have the most leverage.
How well placed is Britain’s education system to respond to these issues?
There is a consensus around the increased importance of education & skills.
The government has substantially raised investment in education. This has bought
an expansion in our early years provision, a programme to rebuild or refurbish all
schools, increases in the numbers of teachers and other staff, as well as higher
salaries, raising the attractiveness of teaching as a career. Our education inspection
service say the current generation of teachers are the best ever.
Where we may fall down is in the value our society places on education and on
vocational education in particular.
This links to my second issue, of developing an education system for everyone, not
just the advantaged.
Public examination results show that standards in our schools have continued to rise
in recent years, with particularly significant improvements at primary. But variation
between and within schools is higher than in some other countries and while the top
stratum of English pupils does very well internationally, a tail of underachievement
acts as a brake on our performance.
Low educational attainment and participation is strongly correlated with social class
in the UK and reflect inequalities that are pronounced even before children reach
school.
On my third issue of developing non-cognitive skills, the UK has a great tradition of
broad schooling and extra-curricular activities on which to build. In particular many
otherwise extremely effective Asian education systems look to learn from British
schools about how best to develop creativity. However, we should not complacent
when many employers report dissatisfaction with school leavers’ “employability
skills”, such as team working, problem-solving and communication skills.
And it is my fourth issue – of affecting change outside the classroom – where we
probably have furthest to go. Levels of parental engagement in learning are highly
variable. But we do not have strong evidence of the effectiveness of policies to
improve parenting.
What might be some key priorities for Britain’s education system?
This analysis has thrown up a host of issues. But I will end by pointing to three areas
of education strategy that the evidence suggests should be priorities for improving
our performance and meeting these challenges.
First, whatever the uncertainties about the future, we can sure that we will not
achieve a world-class education system without a world-class teaching workforce.
Data from Tennessee shows that if two average 8-year old were given different
teachers – one of them a high performer, the other a low performer – their
performance would diverge by more than 50 percentile points within three years. The
OECD find that teacher quality makes the largest difference to performance on its
international rankings. I recently visited Finland – which tops those rankings – and
was struck by the extraordinary high status in which their teaching profession is held.
They receive 10 applicants for every place and only recruit from the top 10% of the
academic cohort.
As I have said the status and quality of the teaching profession has improved hugely
in Britain, but we will need to continue and intensity this progress if we are to meet
our ambitions.
Second, key to equalising life chances will be high-quality early years provision,
combined with continuing personalised interventions throughout the system for those
who fall behind.
James Heckman has demonstrated the high returns from investment in the early
years. In Britain we need to now match our expanded capacity with increases in the
quality of provision to deliver better outcomes for young children.
But even the with best early years provision some children would continue to fall
behind. The government is expanding 1:1 provision for underachievers in literacy and
numeracy, and again we can learn from Finland, where teams within schools provide
continuous educational and welfare interventions letting almost no child slip through
the net.
Third, as we move to insist all young people stay in education and training until 18, it
will be more important than ever that we develop effective specialised and
employment-based routes for young people as alternatives to traditional schooling.
The UK has historically had rather weak vocational provision, and this had
contributed to high levels of disengagement at secondary school.
The government is in the process of introducing new “diplomas” – qualifications for
14 to 19 year olds which will combine theoretical and practical elements. Delivering
them effectively will be a huge challenge in the coming years.
But alongside this it will also be critical to strengthen the apprenticeship route. In the
UK apprenticeships are relatively strong in traditional sectors. But they have not kept
up with changes to the structure of the economy and are still too rare in the service
sector and indeed the public sector.
Conclusion
So, to conclude, I’ve argued that the changing world we have been discussing has
very real implications for the importance of education policy and the type of education
system we need to build.
The UK government has prioritised education and made significant progress. But we
have a way to go to achieve an education system that delivers for all pupils all
tomorrow’s skills needs and engages in the home as well as the school.
Some strategic priorities are clear: on the workforce, early years and strong routes
for all from school to work. On each one the government is working to improve our
performance.
Given the scale of the economic and social forces I have outlined - we cannot afford
to fail.