Canberra, 21 October 2005
The Australian Department of Education Science and Training hosted a seminar in Canberra on 21 October 2005 to consider Australian (Victoria and South Australia) and New Zealand initiatives being conducted under the OECD/ CERI Schooling for Tomorrow project. It also considered a previous OECD project, Teachers Matter. Participants were mainly from government and non-government education authorities. The seminar was well received and a number of education authorities expressed interest in Project activities and a wish to be kept updated as to future developments.
Schooling for Tomorrow
Schooling for Tomorrow is intended to develop methods and tools for analysing change and managing options for future schooling (“futures thinking”). The initial activities established under Phase 2 of the project included: England – Creating and applying a method (‘toolkit’) for building futures thinking among school leaders; Ontario (English) – using scenarios to build dialogue and trust about future of teaching profession, and Ontario (French) – using the 6 scenarios to build the desired (7th scenario) future for the minority French-speaking system; and New Zealand (described below).
The presentation by David Istance, Project Leader for Schooling for Tomorrow (SFT), noted that education decision-making is increasingly complex and predominantly short-term, although education and learning being fundamental to long-term futures. There is a need to compile existing tools and develop new ones for long-term thinking in policy and practice.
SFT activities adopt a futures-oriented methodology, with a time horizon of at least 10 years into the future. They address educational change and innovation through informing strategy, building capacity or promoting dialogue, incorporate stakeholders with a clear interest in education and address priority issues for the stakeholders involved.
Phase Three (from late 2005) will build on the international futures thinking knowledge base, with wider participation in ‘futures thinking in action’, Trends and scenarios will be re-visited as well as undertaking new work on learning innovation. He also flagged close cooperation with CERI University Futures and other OECD programmes
The project is also engaged in building a flexible trends resource of wider trends shaping future schooling (such as ageing society; work, innovation and growth in knowledge-based economies; values, ways of life & well-being; and sustainable development or global crisis). It is also examining more specific trends in learning and education and more in-depth analysis of drivers and change, such as differentiation of educational experiences, choice and inclusion, pathways for learning, schooling and lifelong learning, and the graduate labour market (especially women) and teacher supply.
Other work will include consolidating the analysis undertaken in Phase 2 of ‘Understanding Demand for Schooling’, and radical innovation in learning. The latter will focus on innovations in learning – what might 21st century schooling look like, complementing at the micro level the macro focus on trends, scenarios and policy initiatives and close collaboration with new reflections on ‘new millennium learner’, ICT and e-learning, and finally, personalisation analysis.
Reports currently in preparation for publication or as working papers include:
- futures thinking in theory and practice;
- understanding demand for schooling;
- personalisation of learning; and
- Working papers on trends and ICT.
A copy of the OECD PowerPoint presentation 
(934.5 KB) is available to download.
Presentations were also given on the following initiatives.
Victoria – Focus on the Future (Victorian Department of Education, and Training), which has been developed to develop a shared vision across the government-school system of what school education might look like in the future, build a group of change leaders who are ‘futures literate’ and inform further development and implementation of Performance and Development practices and cultures.
The initiative involves detailed work with accredited Performance and Development Culture Schools as an action research base, and delivery of one day ‘futures literacy’ workshops to school based staff. Expected outcomes will include advice and guidance from high performing schools on future development of the initiative, increased awareness and understanding of futures thinking and an analysis of preferred futures and associated policy issues developed at regional workshops. A copy of the presentation handout 
(317.0 KB) has been made available to download.
South Australian - Creating the Future (South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services), which gathered community views on future education provision to meet emerging community expectations, and then used futures thinking and scenario building to inform strategic policy development within DECS and more broadly across government and to support and contribute to capacity building across South Australian communities.
Scenario planning involved: extrapolating current South Australian trends to develop a number of probable future scenarios; examining how participants ‘feel’ within those scenarios, leading to the development of principles underpinning a preferred scenario; developing the elements of a preferred future to be examined within each proposed implementation context; and developing inquiry questions for evaluating proposed new approaches that enable the delivery of improved services
The outcome from scenario planning will be a refined process of scenario development and created a focus on the policy direction of integrated services which further highlighted the importance of interdependence. Integration involves a coordinated policy for children where sectors including care, education, family support services, employment and health services work together in integrated networks. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation (2.1 MB) has been made available to download.
New Zealand Secondary Futures - which helps New Zealanders create a vision for change in secondary education by:
- Creating space to contemplate the future
- Providing tools to resource thinking about the future of education
- Sharing trends for the future direction of New Zealand society
- Sharing information about possibilities to make more students more successful
- Eliciting people’s preferences in relation to the future of the New Zealand education system
- Supporting change by taking information out to others
Specific aims include building futures literacy and supporting innovation. Its lessons include placing students first, the importance of Inspiring teachers, community connectedness, and the place of technology. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation (2.2 MB) has been made available to download.