International education and the future of our schools
Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 8:08AM 
Go on! Try and imagine the school of the future
More often than not, when we ask this question, the conversation leaps quickly towards an imaginary world of either ‘no school at all’ with teachers replaced by technology, or thoughts of extraordinary buildings in which children are engaged in unimaginably complex tasks, far removed from anything we experienced during our own school days. As we attempt to plot our journey towards the future, it might therefore be useful to strip our thinking back to a few simple, guiding questions.
What will change?
A great deal. We are already feeling the transformative impact of the digital revolution on the learning landscape: the sheer quantity of available information is expanding exponentially and student access to it is 24/7/365; the revolution in social media means that children can talk to each other anytime, anywhere, in ways that may make parents feel alienated and disenfranchised; the traditional physical and temporal boundaries between home and school are dissolving; teachers and students can work together at any time; students can bully each other from the safety of their own bedroom. For schools and parents alike, change is happening at a speed that is genuinely hard to manage.
In terms of curricular content also, the need to address pressing global issues and educate students in ‘21st Century Literacies’ is fast re-shaping content and pedagogy. Those same global issues are re-shaping school design and policy. After all, if we are to practice what we preach, our schools must be models of sustainability.
The students produced by these schools graduate into a changing world of employment. They will move jobs more frequently, live in a greater range of locations. They will need to work in collaborative teams, be adept at rapid innovation in response to a highly competitive market, with powerful new economies dominating market trends.
So, much will change and it is our task to prepare today’s students for success in a world that moves more quickly, and less predictably; where work can be any time and ‘home’ can be anywhere.
What will stay the same?
The same answer: a great deal. People are people. Change or no change, Facebook or no Facebook, we love our children and want them to grow up to be happy, successful, ethical human beings. The essential elements in making this happen will not – indeed, should not – change that much. But what are these irreducible, timeless pedagogical elements?
It’s quite simple really: values and human relationships.
Pushed forward by the relentless winds of change, we must never lose sight of what we stand for and the value of authentic human encounter; we must never lose sight of the fact whilst technology can liberate, it can also isolate and alienate our students and blur the distinctions between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, the virtual and the real. Despite the promise of the digital revolution, we cannot abdicate the responsibility we have – as parents and teachers – for helping children come to a deeper understanding of truth, justice and ‘what is right’ by passing on the stories that are good enough to live by.
So will ‘physical’ schools and ‘real’ teachers disappear? Not if we want students to learn. Certainly, they will have multiple access points to vast quantities of information. But information is not knowledge. In fact, information without human interaction is just information glut. It is the human connection, the opportunity for social interaction and, crucially, the power of human conversation that turns mountains of ‘stuff’ into a personal bank of enduring understanding. The test of schooling must be that new material is sufficiently ‘learned’ for the student to apply the learning appropriately in the range of new and unpredictable situations in which these students will find themselves. That will not happen in virtual learning environments, devoid of genuine, human learner-teacher relationships.
So, we will see exponential growth in information, new markets, new products, new levels of personal adaptability and mobility. We are on a fast train, fuelled by technology. But, as we change, we will come to revalue our old values, realizing that ethics, relationships, humanity, just became more important, not less.
How are international schools equipped to face this evolving reality?
Remarkably well, we would argue. In terms of change, they are almost always independent of large bureaucracies or political movements. They are, in other words, ‘rapid-response’ schools that can adapt quickly to changing learning environments. They live the reality of ‘no borders’, drawing students from a global catchment area - so are past masters at preparing children to move across boundaries: intellectual, cultural, physical. They are well-resourced - so can invest in the technologies that are at the leading edge of learning and life; and they have to, because they serve parent populations that are both informed and demanding.
They are, though, not just schools. They are communities. For an expatriate family, on the move every three to four years, they are the village, the social centre, the home town, the ‘third place’. As such, they are as focused on the students as people, and the parents as partners, as any local school. Indeed more so, as families tend not to have a well-established life outside school, so really do look to the school for ‘everything’. While this places extra demands on the schools, it does have the benefit of making it easy and natural to share conversations about values, managing the realities of raising ‘digital children’ while still emphasizing the constants: bullying is bullying; plagiarism is plagiarism; respect is respect; service is service; information is not knowledge, virtual or not.
International schools are ideally placed to embrace the valuable in the new, without displacing the valuable in the old. So ideally placed, in fact, that, despite the current financial storm, the industry is booming. According to one recent study, for example, the number of fee-paying international schools providing an English-medium education on 1 September 2009 had already reached 5,351 worldwide – more than double the number of schools in 2000.
‘Whichever way you look at it’, says Nick Brummitt, Managing Director of ISC Research Ltd who undertook this study, ‘the English-medium international school market is not just alive but positively thriving. Using the lowest annual growth rate of the last several years we can therefore expect the market to again double in size by 2020, reaching a market worth of £24 billion’.
If parents are voting with their children’s feet, the consensus would seem to be that international schools are the schools of the future.
Who are international schools for?
If one obvious trend is simply ‘growth,’ another is equally conspicuous. We have seen above how an international school can be a ‘local’ school for a global family. Now we see that local families are pulling their children out of local, state-run, schools; opting for what they see as the benefits of a truly international education. They are excited to think that their children will have the opportunity to learn in an environment rich in cultural and linguistic diversity. For these families an ‘international school’ also means a ‘global’ school for local families.
But, it’s not just about good business. International schools have, from the outset, been dedicated to the challenge of developing educated, ethical, empathetic individuals, capable of ‘making a difference’ in future society. Many of us who have been involved in international education over the years are also deeply committed to the ideal that education does make a difference. In short, we believe that the experience we offer and the service we provide to both our globally-mobile and local families can literally make a better future for our children.
Certainly, international schools, with their high quality of service and their lack of state support, are expensive. However, whether they are looking for good value, or good values, international schools are increasingly the schools of choice with ‘national’ and ‘international’ parents.
So what’s the future of international education?
Even if international schools offer an intriguing combination of rapid response to the new while sustaining old values of community, ethics and service and developing students who move easily across boundaries, aren’t they just an insignificant anomaly in the world of education, where the vast majority of students attend national schools?
Perhaps not. We believe that national ministries of education would do well to learn more about how international schools organize themselves to support diverse student bodies, how they have designed flexible, thematic conceptual curricula, how they manage their peer-driven systems of school evaluation, how they work as communities with their parents.
There is much here to be learned and shared, if only the decision-makers in national educational systems, struggling to cope with today’s realties, would take a leaf out of the books (or tablet pc’s) of international school students, and think across borders.
This article was co-authored with Kevin Bartlett, Director, International School of Brussels and Board Chair, Council of International Schools.
It was published in the Telegraph newspaper in October 2009. Click here to visit the site. Click here to download in PDF format.
Reader Comments (4)
Dear David,
The European educational systems have agreed about some common objectives and targets last May. These objectives might not sound very "new" or "exiting" - but they will have a major influence in the national education policies in the near future.
I wonder if it could be a good idea for the international schools in Europe to reflect on these common objectives, too.
Kari
FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
European strategy and co-operation in education and training
There is a new strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training adopted by the European Council in May 2009. All the European Union member countries have agreed to have a common strategy in education and training. This agreement will without any doubt have an effect in all the educational systems in all the member states in the near future.
The new common strategy emphasizes countries working together and learning from each other. The long term objectives are:
1. Making lifelong learning and mobility a reality;
2. Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training;
3. Promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship;
4. Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training.
Some specific EU-level long term benchmarks have been set for 2020:
Adult participation in lifelong learning
By 2020, an average of at least 15 % of adults should participate in lifelong learning
Low achievers in basic skills
By 2020, the share of low-achieving 15-years olds in reading, mathematics and science should be less than 15 %.
Tertiary level attainment
By 2020, the share of 30-34 year olds with tertiary educational attainment should be at least 40 %.
Early leavers from education and training
By 2020, the share of early leavers from education and training should be less than 10 %.
Early childhood education
By 2020, at least 95 % of children between 4 years old and the age for starting compulsory primary education should participate in early childhood education.
Mobility
The Commission is invited to submit to the Council a proposal for a benchmark in this area by the end 2010, focusing initially on physical mobility between countries in the field of higher education, vocational education and training and teacher mobility.
Employability
Given the importance of enhancing employability through education and training in order to meet current and future labour market challenges, the Commission is invited to submit to the Council a proposal for a possible European benchmark in this area by the end of 2010.
Language learning
In view of the importance of learning two foreign languages from an early age - a proposal for a possible benchmark in this area, based on the ongoing work on language competences
Kari Kivinen
Reference:
Official Journal of the European Union 28.5.2009
David,
You raise very pertinent issues on how to bring on board national education ministries in host countries where international schools are located. This remains a challenge that I believe is as a result of the diverse needs that national ministries align their policies. In most cases, at least across Africa, the international schools feature as a tiny blip if at all in the national ministry's radar and the irony is that there is just so much these ministries can learn from these schools in terms of pedagogy, curricula and even technology and human resources in some instances. Or could it be that international schools need to look within? I leave this for another day.
Regards,
B. Bett
I found a blog post at the National Association of Scholars in the States. I think gives a pretty clear picture of where education might be ten and twenty years out. Perhaps visitors here will find it useful . http://ilnk.me/18f
Thanks for your comments, Kari, Benjamin and Michael. In different ways, they have each made me think more deeply about how the future of education and the role we have to play in shaping this future, as opposed to simply being tossed around by greater socio-political forces. I encourage others to share their own perspectives and insights.