The Future of Education and Skills

Across the world, there is growing agreement that education needs to do more than deliver subject knowledge. Schools are increasingly expected to prepare students for a future that is uncertain, fast-changing, and deeply interconnected.

The OECD has been at the centre of this shift through its Future of Education and Skills 2030 project. This work highlights the importance of developing what it calls transformative competencies, the ability for learners to create new value, reconcile tensions and dilemmas, and take responsibility for their actions.

This represents a significant shift. Education is no longer just about what students know, but about how they use that knowledge in unfamiliar and complex situations.

At the same time, the World Economic Forum reinforces this direction through its Education 4.0 agenda, which calls for closer alignment between education systems and the evolving needs of the workforce. Its taxonomy highlights skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving as essential for future readiness.

Taken together, these frameworks send a clear message: Schools are expected to develop both knowledge and capability. However, this creates a new layer of complexity.

As research from the Brookings Institution highlights, while there is strong global consensus around the importance of these broader skills, there is far less clarity about how they should be consistently taught, assessed, and recognised in practice.

Teachers are now navigating multiple expectations:

• delivering curriculum content
• embedding transferable or durable skills
• supporting student agency and independence
• preparing learners for future pathways

In many classrooms, this work is already happening. Students are collaborating, problem-solving, reflecting, and adapting as part of everyday learning.

Yet despite this, these capabilities are not always visible, to students, to teachers, or to others. This is where an important tension emerges. While systems increasingly value these capabilities, recognition often lags behind. Schools are developing skills, but not always making them visible or portable.