The new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are profoundly altering society, the economy and the labour market. In order to thrive in a world increasingly shaped by automation and artificial intelligence (AI), human workers will require skills that complement these technologies – and adapting to them will require a radically different education system.
England has undergone several decades of reform in education, aimed at improving standards. At the core of these changes was a long-overdue and welcome focus on accountability, discipline and safe school environments.
However, the education system in England continues to rely heavily on passive forms of learning focused on direct instruction and memorisation. Taken together, the current curriculum, mode of assessment and inspection regime drive schools to overemphasise knowledge, and to instil this via a narrow set of methods and subjects.
Of course, pupils still need a good grounding in knowledge. But to flourish in increasingly digital workplaces, they also need more space to develop attributes such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaborative problem-solving (which experts dub the “4Cs”).
