Are we challenging the future?

or

Is the future challenging us?

Helsinki, April 2008

Henno Theisens, CERI/ OECD

Schooling for Tomorrow

• Long term thinking is important especially in education:

–Pupils who start their education today will be working in 15 to 20 years time.

– Increasing complexity of educational systems necessitates longer term visions

• But educational policy making is often short term, responding to incidents and direct political pressures.

Dealing with the future is

challenging…

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University

Just before the 1929Wall St. Crash

Really, really challenging…

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”

Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, École Supérieure de Guerre

Really, really, really challenging

En l’an 2000: in the year 2000

The choice is therefore:

• To accept that long term planning is more or less meaningless and to only consider the short term

Or

• To try and think rigorously and imaginatively about the future without pretending full certainty and to find ways of handling uncertainty.

Trends for the future

Many relevant trends, but today a focus on:

• Globalisation

• Technological change

GLOBALISATION

Part one

Increasing economic

globalisation

China and India Catching Up

The widening gap between richer

and poorer world regions

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

Western

Europe

US, Canada,

Australia,

New Zealand

Japan Latin America Eastern

Europe &

former USSR

Asia

(excluding

Japan)

Africa

1000

1820

1998

More enter than leave OECD countries, with

substantial numbers now “foreign born”

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Luxem

bourg

Austra

lia

Sw

itzerla

nd

New

Zeala

nd

Canada

Austria

Germ

any

Unite

d S

tate

s

Sw

eden

Belg

ium

Irela

nd

Neth

erla

nds

Gre

ece

Fra

nce

Unite

d K

ingdom

Norw

ay

Portu

gal

Denm

ark

Spain

Czech R

epublic

Slo

vak R

epublic

Fin

land

Hungary

Italy

Turk

ey

Pola

nd

Stock of foreign-born as a percentage of

population (2004)

Annual net migration per 1 000 population

(1990 - 2004)

Increasing numbers of international

students in higher education

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Part two

Computers becoming rapidly

faster and more powerful

Towards universal access to a

home computer?

Number of websites worldwide

increasing rapidly

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Growing access to broadband

Internet connection

0

5

10

15

20

25

2001 2002-Q2 2002 2003-Q2 2003 2004-Q2 2004 2005-Q2 2005 2006-Q2 2006

Canada United Kingdom

France Japan

United States Germany

OECD Italy

Massive growth of Wikipedia

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

All languages

English language

So in conclusion

• Yes the future is challenging us.

• Most educational systems on the whole are not challenging the future yet, but there are examples of schools that do.

• But how many challenges can one system deal with realistically?