Context
The World Economic Forum’s New Economy and Society Platform aims to work with its partners to provide better education, skills and jobs to 1 billion people by 2030. The urgency around this agenda has been given added impetus by the COVID-19 crisis, and there is an unprecedented opportunity to explore actions required to deliver new skills to the workforce, new delivery mechanisms for learning and training, and new learning ecosystems to enable the Reskilling Revolution.
Education 4.0
Many of today’s children will work in new job types that do not yet exist, with an increased premium on both digital and social-emotional skills in the coming years. The gap between education and jobs is further widened by limited innovation in learning systems, which were largely designed to mirror factory-style growth models. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has made it imperative that education systems adapt.
At the same time, school closures caused by the COVID-19 crisis have further exposed the existing inadequacies of education systems around the world.
Without action, the next generation will be unprepared for the needs of the future, creating risks for both productivity and social cohesion. There is an opportunity for public and private sector leaders to reset primary and secondary education systems, and co-design content and delivery that deliver on children’s needs for the future.
Based on the framework developed in Schools of the Future: Defining New Models of Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Education 4.0 initiative aims to better prepare the next generation of talent through primary and secondary education transformation. The initiative will drive impact through four interconnected interventions:
Implementing new measurement mechanisms for Education 4.0 skills
Mainstreaming technology-enhanced Education 4.0 learning experiences
Empowering the Education 4.0 workforce
Setting Education 4.0 country-level standards and priorities