3 timeless skills for the young learners of the future

By Titus Edge, St. Paul's School Headmaster 

In November we hosted the St. Paul’s Educational Conference, welcoming our international keynote speakers, our own staff and colleagues from schools in São Paulo and beyond. These are the perfect occasions to develop ideas, consider aspects one’s own practice and make meaningful professional connections. In welcoming delegates to the school, I reflected on the last 3 years and how they served to highlight how unpredictable the world is. Historians of the future will no doubt look back with great interest at the second and third decades of the 21st century and, with the advantage of historical perspective, advance their own theories on the breakdown of many of the old certainties that that seemed rock solid at the start of this millennium. 

It is not just the pandemic that has shaken our world. Political polarisation and economic dislocation have been matched by increasing alarm around environmental sustainability. The vast change brought on by digital technology and, with it, the very mixed blessing of social media, has triggered challenges to once conventional societal attitudes. Those of us who work in education find ourselves at the very front line of this change. And to us falls the huge responsibility of ensuring that young people not only safely navigate their childhoods in a world so far removed from that which we experienced, but that they are prepared for a world that will present them with realities that we cannot even imagine.  

Teachers of the past, or at least those from my memory, were too often preparing children for the world as it was at that time. Whilst there was an acceptance that technology would develop at a steady pace, the conventional belief was that children would go on to do the jobs their parents did in more or less the same way. And yet the way that we work, communicate, share memories, make plans, value assets, spend money, shape opinions, develop relationships and so on has changed out of all recognition since the year 2000.  

How much more different the world will be for our primary pupils when they leave school at eighteen? We have no way of knowing of course and preparing them for the unknown is a real challenge. It does however seem almost certain that they will require three key skillsets to make a success of their world regardless of what individual paths they take … 

1. The first is superb learning skills. We must not just teach them facts and superficial skills and then test their retention in assessments, most of which they will forget very quickly thereafter. Instead, we must focus on developing those deeper skills that, whatever the world presents, they will certainly need: literacy and numeracy of course, but also critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, organisation, the ability to pull apart a question, examine evidence and construct a cogent argument. These skills are surely timeless and must be embedded in all their learning.  
2. The second are personal skills, or “soft skills” to use an inadequate phrase. We must nurture in young people the primacy of kindness and respect, the ability to get along with people, to collaborate as a team, take the initiative with a group when needed and know when it’s better to allow others to a lead, to have the mental sturdiness and resilience to survive and thrive when things get tough; whatever the future, our young people are going to need these attributes in spades. 
3. Finally, they will need to develop outstanding digital skills. The digital revolution has transformed almost every aspect of modern existence within my own adult life, and it is impossible to imagine that our children will be able to thrive in a world where they are not confident digital learners, with the ability to harness the technology that surrounds us and navigate some of the negative aspects that come in its wake. Ultimately technology must be the servant and not the master of our young people; it is a tool to support, rather than displace, their humanity and learning. As with all tools, it can be a powerful aid but can also cause significant harm if used irresponsibly or maliciously.  

During my own career, I have witnessed the vocation of teaching becoming ever more professionalised and specialised. We live in an age of targets, of qualifiable data and ever more complex and obscure jargon. And whilst this trend is to be largely welcomed and embraced – poor teaching must not be tolerated in the way it so often was in the past – we need to ensure that we that we don’t lose sight of why we exist and what we must do to prepare our young people for future success.  

Through developing learning skills, soft skills and digital skills in a way that is embedded and absorbed into the daily fabric of the curriculum is essential to equip our young people for the world of the 2030s, ‘40s and ‘50s. The educational world had to respond to the challenges of the pandemic and make significant adjustments to the way learning and assessment was conducted. Not all these changes deserve to endure but we must not regress to the cosy certainties of the pre-pandemic period.  

We live in an age of targets, of qualifiable data and ever more complex and obscure jargon. And whilst this trend is to be largely welcomed and embraced – poor teaching must not be tolerated in the way it so often was in the past – we need to ensure that we that we don’t lose sight of why we exist and what we must do to prepare our young people for future success.