FUTURES ANALYSTS’ NETWORK NEWSLETTER: September 2008

Introduction

The September 2008 meeting of the FAN Club – Learning in the future – was held at University College London on 16 September 2008. The meeting, jointly hosted by Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC), the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), The Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS) and University College London (UCL) explored the current and emerging trends and practices that will shape education and learning in the future.

Social inclusion through learning

We were welcomed to UCL by Professor Michael Worton, who introduced UCL’s vision for learning and spoke about the way that the University is trying to foster education for global citizenship by putting community engagement and social responsibility at the heart of the UCL experience. As an example, he cited the example of UCL’s mentoring programme, where students work with school children across London, providing 1:1 coaching to build pupils’ confidence and set targets that reflect their personal aspirations.

Professor Worton also introduced the UCL Academy, based in Camden and being developed in partnership with Camden Council. The Academy, which will open in 2011, will be a non-selective mixed school specialising in science, mathematics and languages and will allow UCL to contribute to its local community and put global citizenship into practice in the secondary sector. It will be co-located with the Swiss Cottage Special School and will be a hub for UCL’s widening participation activities within the community.The school will build on UCL’s cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning and will extend the mentoring approach to pastoral care.Given the high percentage of the intake – 20% - who are likely to be refugees, the Academy is exploring the possibility of a designated refugee stream with focussed, accelerated English language tuition.

You can learn more about the Academy on UCL’s website. Michael Worton’s presentation can be downloaded here.

Beyond Current Horizons

Dr Keri Facer and Dan Sutch from Futurelab - who are working with DCSF on the Beyond Current Horizons programme to build a challenging and long-term vision for education in the context of social and technological change – ran the morning’s workshop.

Beyond Current Horizons aims to ensure that the UK education system has identified and is prepared for a wide range of potential social, technological and cultural futures.This is being tackled through three main activities:

• building a base of evidence and ideas through a programme of research, identifying emerging trends in society, technology and education;
• engaging stakeholders and the public in debates on the purpose, nature and organisation of education; and
• developing tools to support strategic decision making in the field of education and technology.

Keri and Dan highlighted 6 socio-techno trends in their presentation that are likely to shape the future of education:

• ageing population;
• increased workforce mobility;
• large scale systems of systems and ubiquitous computing;
• 3D fabrication and plastic electronics;
• Cosmetic psychopharmacology; and
• Brain machine interfaces, tangible and haptic technology.

Participants explored these issues in a series of workshops, discussing their significance for the future learners, resources and infrastructure, teachers, universities and industry.

A full write up will appear on the Beyond Current Horizons website – but some key findings that emerged were that participants want education in the future to enable

• resilience to change;
• flexible skills;
• citizenship, moral education, ethics, community and global citizenship;
• new measures of ‘good’ performance;
• awareness of new divides;
• clear understanding of the relationship between knowledge, information, access and virtual experiences and of the relationship – in an information age – between ‘fact’ ‘truth’ ‘reality’; and
• teachers to play a role in the changing context of education practice and delivery.

Reflections: e-skills UK

Ray Snowdon of e-skills UK offered his own reflections on what employers want from learning in the future.

e-skills UK’s mission is to ensure the UK has the skills it needs to compete in the global economy and brings together employers, educators and Government to address together the technology-related skills issues no one party can solve on its own.It provides advice, services and programmes that have a measurable impact on IT related skills development in the UK.

Ray reminded the meeting that employers want people who

• can read, write, talk, count, and use computers – basic skills;
• can communicate, relate to other people, work in a team, and plan and deliver a project – employability skills;
• are interested in the job on offer and may have some relevant knowledge and skills;
• have a record of achievement both in education and the wider world;
• have a positive attitude to themselves, learning, and to employment; and
• know who they are, what their aspirations are, what their options are, and how to translate these into a sensible reality.

He then highlighted a new initiative led by BT and e-skills UK to develop a National Skills Academy on behalf of the IT and Telecoms sector.The Academy proposes to support the ambition of global leadership in high level technology skills by:

• helping employers to accelerate the productivity of new recruits into the IT workforce;
• improving access by employers of all sizes to high quality courses and development programmes for higher level skills, including new provision in areas of employer priority and supported by government funding where applicable; and
• enabling the IT professional workforce to gain external recognition of skills, supporting career progression and mobility.

Ray likened the Academy to a ‘SatNav for Skills’, helping employers and learners to plan the right learning and development journeys that will support both organisational and individual learning and development needs and provide learners with the platforms they need to learn anytime, anyplace and anywhere.

More information is available on e-skills UK’s website.

Mental Capital and Wellbeing

Derek Flynn, Project Leader for Foresight’s Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project provide an overview of the project, which seeks to produce a challenging and long-term vision for maximising mental capital and mental wellbeing in the UK in the twenty first century – both for the benefit of society, and for the individual.

The final project report – including an analysis of the policy options – will be available after the project is launched on 22 October 2008; the science evidence base has now been published and is available on the Project website.

The reports highlight future challenges in five areas:

• Mental capital and wellbeing;
• Learning through life;
• Mental health;
• Wellbeing and work; and
• Learning difficulties.

Derek’s slides can be downloaded here

UK Futures: Society and Economy 2030

Following the formation of DIUS in 2007, Ministers commissioned Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre to develop a set of scenarios to improve the robustness of existing policies and assisting in the development of robust new policies and corporate plans for DIUS and OGDs.Alex King, Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre, gave a preview of the draft scenarios.

The scenario matrix is formed by two axes of uncertainty:

• Closed { Global Context } Open
• Individualistic { Social Values } Collectivist

Closed { Global Context } Open describes uncertainty about how the world will develop in the future.At one end of the spectrum, closed economies mean high barriers to the flow of goods, services and capital; and nations adopt unilateral or bilateral approaches to problem solving.At the other end, open economies mean low barriers to the flow of goods, services and capital; and nations adopt multilateral approaches to problem solving.

Individualistic { Social Values } Collectivist describes uncertainty about social values.At one end of the spectrum, societies are individualistic, valuing personal freedoms and choices; social rights are more important than responsibilities and self motivation is valued.At the other end, societies value common good and pursue equality; social responsibilities are more important than rights and redistribution is pursued.

The resulting scenario matrix describes four possible scenarios:

• Perpetual Motion
• Shaken Open;
• Protective Collective; and
• Self-Service.

The main characteristics of the scenarios are set out in the following table:

Next meeting

The next meeting of the FAN club will take place on 13 November 2008 at Surgeons’ Hall, Edinburgh.The meeting will explore the use of futures thinking in public policy making.