The document discusses preparing education for the future by considering possible futures and taking action to influence preferable outcomes. It highlights challenges such as changes to the information landscape, relationships between generations, and blurred boundaries between learning and work. The author advocates distributed leadership, systematically considering futures, and networking with others to enact innovative solutions. Key questions are posed about leveraging local expertise and resources, addressing emerging challenges, and envisioning the needs of education in 2025 to guide present-day strategies.

1. Preparing For Tomorrow By Leading Today
Dan Sutch
www.futurelab.org.uk
dan.sutch@futurelab.org.uk

2. www.futurelab.org.uk

3. The challenge…
“We need the combined expertise of
industry, academia, practitioners and policy to
design and implement the tools, the
technologies and practices that will
revolutionise the way we learn”
Lord Puttnam

4. futurelab.org.uk/events

5. futurelab.org.uk/resources

6. Mobi Missions Astroversity Moovl
Exploratree Enquiring Minds
My-E
Space Signpost Ecolibrium Fizzees
futurelab.org.uk/projects

7. Developing Leaders for Tomorrow
• How do we lead and
create change in • What‟s happening
education? tomorrow? (or how can we
prepare for the future?)
The title begs two important questions...

8. •futurelab.org.uk/resources
•Process of innovation
•Practice of innovation

9. Beyond here Horizons
goes Current
www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk
Context for change
Future challenges for education

11. Other experiences
“In the end I like what we did, but I wouldn‟t call it schools for the future. I’d call it schools for
the very near future. So what was missing from my point of view was having some real „blue
skies‟ thinking and then reining it back into something that you could deliver in the next say, five
or ten years.” Alsop Architects, talking about BSF exemplars
“We‟re always just fire-fighting and thinking about next week – we need something to help us
raise our sights to the longer term question of ‘what is this all for‟” England, Children‟s
Services Director
“I have to plan, I have to make serious and long term decisions that will affect education in my
local authority for the next 20 – 50 years – but I haven’t got any tools to help me think that
far ahead, I have no idea what the possibilities might be” Local Authority Education Advisor
“What I‟m worried about is that we are just taking for granted what ‘the future will be’, we‟re
not actually asking whether that is likely to happen or not , or what other things might happen,
and if we‟re not doing that, god knows if we‟re actually preparing children in the right way”
Award-winning Head teacher, England

12. The BCH programme is aiming to build a challenging and
long term vision for education in the context of socio-
technological change 2025 and beyond
Long term futures programme intended to
• Enhance the „futures thinking‟ capacity of the UK education
system
• Inform current strategy, decision making and planning
Futurelab running the programme in partnership with DCSF

13. What is futures work?
•Systematically talking about things yet to occur
•Not predictions – offering multiple futures
• Possible
• Probable
• Preferable
•Range of tools & approaches
• Usually supporting a scenario

14. Section title goes here
Activities & outcomes

15. Building the evidence
•Establishing academic team
• International reputations
• Wide range of domain expertise
•Commissioning original research
• 65+ papers within 5 research areas
• Economics, neuroscience, social science
•Developing appropriate methodology
• Recognising emerging data trends

16. Research
•Reviews from BCH
• 65+ original evidence reviews
•Over-arching papers
• Reviews relevant across all research areas
•Enabling audience to engage with BCH research
• Accessible & searchable

17. Public & stakeholder engagement
•Why
• Representing wider values & aspirations
• Ensuring relevance to broad audience
•What
• Workshops & seminars
‗ 2007-08 – Parent/carers, Student, Teachers, Baby boomer workshops,
‗ 2008-09 - Citizen‟s Council, Citizens Panel, expert interviews
• Web-based engagement tools
‗ Million Futures, Power League, online survey

18. millionfutures.org.uk

19. powerleague.org.uk

20. Scenarios
•6 alternative futures for education
• Broad sociotechnological changes
• Implications of these changes for education
• Ways in which education might respond to these
changes
•Prompting & catalysing debate
• Intended for a wide audience – policy, academia, system
leaders within education

21. visionmapper.org.uk Title

22. A few trends & questions

23. Information landscape
•Denser, deeper, more diverse – “know more stuff about
more stuff”
•Gather, store, use, share more data about more of our
world than at present
• Social movements towards accountability &
transparency
• Increased availability of data storage
• Digitally tag entities in extended world
• New forms of bio/genetic information
What does this mean for what we teach and when we teach it?

24. „Digital natives‟ grow up
•Facing their own technological changes
•More reliant on tech. for learning & work – more support
needed
•Parents/grandparents grew up with tech. – able to/expect
to monitor children & be in contact
• Over 50% population over 50 by 2030
• Extended life expectancy
• Adult-child relationships changing
What does this mean for relationships and involvement of parents in education?

25. Institutional boundaries
•Weakened & porous
•Information not tied to institution
•Blurring „work‟ & „leisure‟
• Personal networks/expertise/brand
•Education/work/retirement no longer differentiated
• Working life longer
•Public/private roles merging
What does this mean for where learning takes place – and when people access it?

26. A challenge to consider...
•Designing educational practices for networked individuals
• Networks change the nature of knowledge
• Individual no longer sovereign
‗ Pervasive technologies
‗ Cognitive enhancement
‗ Distributed intelligence
• Role of social networks amplified
‗ Always had a role
‗ Greater part in filtering & managing data

27. visionmapper.org.uk Title

28. •futurelab.org.uk/resources
•How do we act to bring about
•„preferable‟ futures?

29. The successful exploitation of ideas generated at the
intersection of invention and insight, which leads to the
creation of social or economic value.

30. Putting the ideas into practice
•Inspection and review •Poor communication and •Understanding new approach
access to information •Enaction of innovation
•Assessment constraints
•Poor participation •Teachers independence
•Confidence in new in teams • Teachers and peers and influence
approach
•Fear of unknown
•Challenge to „power‟ •Personal
•Curriculum constraints interests
•Confidence in new •Personal desire
approach •Management of tools
•Teachers professional
development •Support network
•Time to understand •Time to understand
•Time to personalise •Time to personalise
•ITT and CPD •Curriculum constraints •Time constraints
•Access to training •Imposed practices •Poor goal definition
•Understanding •Separation of new •Poor alignment of
new approach practice with personal actions to goals
beliefs •Poor monitoring of
results (standard and
non-standard)
•Teachers adapting to
change

37. Places to start...?
•2 Futurelab projects that may provide a stimulus to „try
something new‟.
•Both are open enough to be made locally appropriate.

40. Preparing for tomorrow by leading today
•Distributed leadership – building from insight and invention
• Think systematically about possible futures to ensure our
actions help bring about the preferable futures we want to
see
• Linking to others who can support you/who you can
support (networks, groups and linking)

41. 3 questions to ponder...
•Asset Mapping
•- in your regions, what „expertise and resources‟ can you
build upon? (geographically and online)
•Initiating innovation
• - what challenges do you think we need to begin
addressing, locally and nationally?
•Oracle at Delphi
• - what would you want to know of 2025 to inform your
strategies and planning?

42. Thank you goes here
Section title
Dan Sutch
dan.sutch@futurelab.org.uk
Slideshare.net/Dannno
Twitter.com/Dannno

43. www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk
www.visionmapper.org.uk
www.flux.futurelab.org.uk
www.millionfutures.org.uk
www.powerleague.org.uk
www.futurelab.org.uk