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The turning point: Why we must transform education now

Global warming. Accelerated digital revolution. Growing inequalities. Democratic backsliding. Loss of biodiversity. Devastating pandemics. And the list goes on. These are just some of the most pressing challenges that we are facing today in our interconnected world.

The diagnosis is clear: Our current global education system is failing to address these alarming challenges and provide quality learning for everyone throughout life. We know that education today is not fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. These findings were detailed in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report in November 2021 which called for a new social contract for education.

That is why it has never been more crucial to reimagine the way we learn, what we learn and how we learn. The turning point is now. It’s time to transform education. How do we make that happen?

Here’s what you need to know. 

Why do we need to transform education?

The current state of the world calls for a major transformation in education to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. We must ensure the right to lifelong learning by providing all learners - of all ages in all contexts - the knowledge and skills they need to realize their full potential and live with dignity. Education can no longer be limited to a single period of one’s lifetime. Everyone, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged in our societies, must be entitled to learning opportunities throughout life both for employment and personal agency. A new social contract for education must unite us around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape a better world anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.  

What are the key areas that need to be transformed?

• Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools

Education is in crisis. High rates of poverty, exclusion and gender inequality continue to hold millions back from learning. Moreover, COVID-19 further exposed the inequities in education access and quality, and violence, armed conflict, disasters and reversal of women’s rights have increased insecurity. Inclusive, transformative education must ensure that all learners have unhindered access to and participation in education, that they are safe and healthy, free from violence and discrimination, and are supported with comprehensive care services within school settings. Transforming education requires a significant increase in investment in quality education, a strong foundation in comprehensive early childhood development and education, and must be underpinned by strong political commitment, sound planning, and a robust evidence base.

• Learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development

There is a crisis in foundational learning, of literacy and numeracy skills among young learners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills compared to their peers. More than 771 million people still lack basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom are women. Transforming education means empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to be resilient, adaptable and prepared for the uncertain future while contributing to human and planetary well-being and sustainable development. To do so, there must be emphasis on foundational learning for basic literacy and numeracy; education for sustainable development, which encompasses environmental and climate change education; and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

• Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession

Teachers are essential for achieving learning outcomes, and for achieving SDG 4 and the transformation of education. But teachers and education personnel are confronted by four major challenges: Teacher shortages; lack of professional development opportunities; low status and working conditions; and lack of capacity to develop teacher leadership, autonomy and innovation. Accelerating progress toward SDG 4 and transforming education require that there is an adequate number of teachers to meet learners’ needs, and all education personnel are trained, motivated, and supported. This can only be possible when education is adequately funded, and policies recognize and support the teaching profession, to improve their status and working conditions.

• Digital learning and transformation

The COVID-19 crisis drove unprecedented innovations in remote learning through harnessing digital technologies. At the same time, the digital divide excluded many from learning, with nearly one-third of school-age children (463 million) without access to distance learning. These inequities in access meant some groups, such as young women and girls, were left out of learning opportunities. Digital transformation requires harnessing technology as part of larger systemic efforts to transform education, making it more inclusive, equitable, effective, relevant, and sustainable. Investments and action in digital learning should be guided by the three core principles: Center the most marginalized; Free, high-quality digital education content; and Pedagogical innovation and change.

• Financing of education

While global education spending has grown overall, it has been thwarted by high population growth, the surmounting costs of managing education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a massive global education financial gap amounting to US$ 148 billion annually. In this context, the first step toward transformation is to urge funders to redirect resources back to education to close the funding gap. Following that, countries must have significantly increased and sustainable financing for achieving SDG 4 and that these resources must be equitably and effectively allocated and monitored. Addressing the gaps in education financing requires policy actions in three key areas: Mobilizing more resources, especially domestic; increasing efficiency and equity of allocations and expenditures; and improving education financing data. Finally, determining which areas needs to be financed, and how, will be informed by recommendations from each of the other four action tracks .

What is the Transforming Education Summit?

UNESCO is hosting the Transforming Education Pre-Summit on 28-30 June 2022, a meeting of  over 140 Ministers of Education, as well as  policy and business leaders and youth activists, who are coming together to build a roadmap to transform education globally. This meeting is a precursor to the Transforming Education Summit to be held on 19 September 2022 at the UN General Assembly in New York. This high-level summit is convened by the UN Secretary General to radically change our approach to education systems. Focusing on 5 key areas of transformation, the meeting seeks to mobilize political ambition, action, solutions and solidarity to transform education: to take stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses; to reimagine education systems for the world of today and tomorrow; and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG-4.

• More on the Transforming Education Summit
• More on the Pre-Summit

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• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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Why we must transform our education systems, now

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, the hon. minister david sengeh and the hon. minister david sengeh minister of education and chief innovation officer - government of sierra leone, chief innovation officer - directorate of science, technology and innovation in sierra leone @dsengeh rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

June 23, 2022

This blog summarizes the research “ Transforming education systems: Why, what, and how .”

Every single day, the challenges of global education become more daunting and more urgent. Just a few days ago on June 21, the United Nations reported that as many as 222 million school-aged children impacted by crisis require urgent educational support — this number is three times the estimates from 2016.  Furthermore, as currently reported by the World Bank and UNICEF, the portion of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries during the pandemic who could not read a simple story is estimated to have grown from about 50 percent to over 70 percent today. The poorest children and those living in remote regions have been hit the hardest. We are at a critical inflection point with hundreds of millions of children likely to miss out on a quality education in the very moment where we have to confront climate change, increasing conflict, and renewed pandemic risks. Alarm bells are being sounded and the United Nations secretary general has invited political leaders, policymakers, youth, and all stakeholders to join him at the Transforming Education Summit (TES) in New York in September 2022 to make commitments that will transform education.   

We agree that something different and transformational needs to happen now. But what does transformation mean, anyway?   

Here we share a condensed version of our perspective on how policymakers can better understand what it means and most importantly get started with making significant commitments for action. We don’t have the final answers, but we want to share the perspective of a global think tank that has studied the development of education systems over the past 100 years and a national government from a low-income country in the midst of an education transformation. You can read the full report here and the executive summary here .  

What is education system transformation?  

At its core, system transformation must entail a fresh review of the goals of our education systems. There must be a frank assessment — are the goals meeting the moment that we are in and are they owned broadly across society? If the answer is “no,” then transformation means repositioning all components of the education system to coherently contribute to a new, shared purpose.  

We hope that countries and local stakeholders can use these insights to take the [education] transformation journey forward wherever they are.

We propose three steps centered on purpose, pedagogy, and position that embed a participatory, inclusive approach as the key to successful transformation.  

Step 1: Start with purpose  

Education leaders, families, teachers, and students can have very different expectations about the purpose of their education system. Without a broadly shared vision in and outside of the education system, any attempt at transformation will have a slim chance of success. When education leaders do take the time to have meaningful conversations with diverse stakeholders about the goals of education, it can help pave the way for a broadly shared vision. Such a shared vision has played a key role in successful reforms in Portugal, Finland, and Canada.    

In Sierra Leone, the most recent education sector plan was developed after careful and thorough consultations with a wide group of stakeholders. In addition to the national and local government, partner countries and civil society organizations, the government has made a point of consulting previously excluded groups like the bike riders union, the market women’s associations, and traditional and religious leaders across the country. Given the deep inequality in students’ learning in Sierra Leone which was highlighted by all stakeholders, the education sector plan and strategy prioritize foundational learning not as an end goal but as the floor to give every child a chance for longer-term educational success. And the country now puts the children who are currently learning the least at the front of its efforts thanks to its Policy on Radical Inclusion in Schools.   

Step 2: (Re)design the pedagogical core  

The second step is to (re)design teaching and learning experiences to ensure students achieve the system’s stated goals. Unfortunately, redesigning education systems often results in limited results for children’s learning and development. We need to focus more on what students are expected to learn — not just how that content is delivered—and we need to pay special attention to those who are learning the least.   

Some of the most promising results that take this approach to heart in recent years come from a practice called Teaching at the Right Level. Grouping children by ability level and conducting interactive learning activities for a period of time each day is at the core of this methodology. Real-time assessments provide data needed to move students on to higher level groups as they master skills. The approach is most effective for education systems that have large numbers of students failing to master literacy and numeracy by the end of primary school and where the default teaching approach is whole group instruction, even with very large class sizes.   

In Sierra Leone, the country has joined the first cohort of World Bank Accelerator Program countries to explicitly change its pedagogical core to support foundational learning. In addition, the country has launched the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge to generate key evidence on what can help improve learning outcomes. Several of the service providers are adopting Teaching at the Right Level to improve learning outcomes. Initial signs are positive for our learning outcomes, as even with COVID-19 disruptions, we do not have major learning losses even if no gains were made.   

Step 3: Position and align system components  

Next, the system must be positioned to support the pedagogical core across the following six components: (1) Curriculum, (2) Human resources, (3) Data and assessment, (4) Governance, (5) Funding, and (6) Engagement of “winners” and “losers” in the alignment process.  

In Sierra Leone, the government has recently updated the preprimary, basic, senior secondary, civic, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) curricula. In addition, the country has paid special attention to using data to support the realignment behind the updated  pedagogical core while investing in teacher training at all levels.   

Before 2018, Sierra Leone had little detailed information about who its education system served and who it left out. Data collection had used paper-based questionnaires, and, as a result, data were often lagging by up to a year and scattered across multiple government departments. Sierra Leone set about digitizing its annual school census and cut the data collection time to 10 weeks. By also carefully updating the questions asked, Sierra Leone shed light on who was left out of the system. Now the Annual School Census is both gender-disaggregated and asks about the disability status of the students and the accessibility of the classrooms. Moreover, the Ministry digitized and linked education data going all the way back to 2015. This gave the Ministry a data-driven starting point for addressing disparities within the education system, and it remains a crucial component supporting its goals of developing a more inclusive system, including for pregnant girls and children with disabilities.   

What now?  

We believe that there is much to learn from history and solutions currently being implemented around the world to help us. As Minister Sengeh’s Co-Chair of the TES Advisory Committee and the Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohamed recently said: “This is not ‘t’ for tweaking. This is ‘T’ for Transformation.” We hope that countries and local stakeholders can use these insights to take the transformation journey forward wherever they are — and for those that are further along on the path, please do share your experiences with us and the world. We look forward to adding your learnings and lessons to the collective effort to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4—quality education for all.   

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Center for Universal Education

June 20, 2024

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June 14, 2024

Emily Markovich Morris, Laura Nóra, Richaa Hoysala, Max Lieblich, Sophie Partington, Rebecca Winthrop

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New Ideas for a New Era of Public Education: 8 Ways We Can Change How Schools Are Organized, Funded, Measured and Led to Prepare Grads for the Age of Automation

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I n 1993, Paul T. Hill founded the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research center based out of the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance that from the outset was focused on issues of the next century and the broader question of how America’s schools can better prepare their graduates for a rapidly changing society.

This past winter, CRPE, now led by Robin J. Lake and based at UW Bothell, hosted a gathering of education experts and observers to commemorate its first quarter-century of work, toasting 25 years of research, analysis, field studies and white papers created in hopes of aiding school leaders, elected officials and families in reimagining our education system. And not just the function of our schools — but the ways in which the larger system is structured, governed and evaluated.

Across its first 25 years, CRPE’s pursuits were focused primarily on developing more highly effective public schools in every community, especially for low-income or otherwise disadvantaged students. One prominent strategy at the core of the center’s work has been the portfolio strategy, in which public schools operate with high levels of flexibility and family choice, paired with strong government oversight. But beyond the portfolio model, the center has also focused on key issues of funding formulas, governmental oversight, innovative practice and the charter school sector.

In a series of new essays and analyses published in coordination with its anniversary celebration, CRPE took the longer view, considering how these systems and structures must adapt over the next 25 years as education becomes more nimble and personalized, and as it becomes a priority for learning to extend beyond the traditional classroom structure.

It was an eye-opening and horizon-expanding thought experiment. And we’ve assembled a handful of these new essays — and their bold theses — below, in a bid to answer the underlying question: What does success look like in 2050 America, and how must our schools evolve to set graduates up for that success?

In honor of CRPE’s 25th anniversary, here are eight of the center’s biggest thoughts about the next era of public education — some not-so-modest proposals worth thinking about:

Reconfiguring the P-16 Pipeline — How do we redraw the high school–college career continuum? American public education assumes one common pathway for all: four years of high school and, for the lucky, another four years of higher education, the required credential for the vast majority of middle- and high-paying jobs. Even as careers grow ever more diverse, and students fall into a clear and concerning skill gap that will only get worse with continued automation, we remain almost singularly devoted to the “4+4” preparation model. Instead, the billions of dollars we devote each year to education would be better spent breaking down the traditional barriers among high school, college and career and reimagining the 9-16 continuum of learning so we can develop the talented workforce and democratic citizenry needed for our nation to thrive in the 21st century. Read the full proposal .

Redefining Equity — Beyond the classroom, how are we going to grapple with out-of-school enrichment, postsecondary preparation and beyond?: Expanding access to educational opportunity has defined debates over school reform for nearly a century, including desegregation efforts, finance equalization cases and proposals to expand school choice. But despite notable progress in some areas, opportunity is more stratified than ever along the lines of race and class. While the issues of racial and income-based segregation, inadequate spending and gaps in achievement continue to define educational inequality, they fail to capture broader societal shifts that are changing the ways we think about youth development. These include increased household spending on out-of-school learning experiences, particularly among wealthy families; the growing complexity of postsecondary educational opportunities; and the importance of non-achievement-based educational outcomes. These shifts highlight sources of educational inequality that, to date, policy has largely failed to address — and at times actively undermined — and suggest a new framework for our evolving conversation surrounding improving opportunity for America’s most vulnerable children. Read the full proposal .

Rejecting ‘Average’ — How we can redesign the school system for the tails, not the mean. The public education system must prepare all students to solve the problems of the future. But the current system is not rising to the challenge. While high school graduation rates are at an all-time high, completion and dropout statistics for students with disabilities remain dismal. (The latest federal education statistics show that fewer than two-thirds finished high school with a standard diploma.) Beyond students with disabilities, other student populations have unique needs that existing public school systems remain ill-equipped to meet. The struggles of these students, along with those of countless other “square pegs” — independent thinkers, nonconformists, students who are exceptionally creative — cry out for approaches that can better match talent with opportunity. Here’s a renewed call to design an education system for the tails, not the mean. Read the full analysis .

Rethinking the Classroom — Instead of a portfolio of schools, envisioning a portfolio of student opportunities: Conversations about the next generation of education reforms often get bogged down in either-or disputes. Should districts focus on improving their own schools or contracting with autonomous schools of choice? Can students gain access to job-related learning opportunities without having to sacrifice high school college prep coursework? Should states invest in expanding universal pre-K and other programs built to help lay students’ academic foundations, or should they focus on building K-12 schools capable of helping them achieve faster rates of academic growth? An agile public education system, Lake argues in this new essay tied to the 25th anniversary of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, would avoid pat answers to these questions and concentrate instead on providing effective, flexible and individual pathways toward common goals. It would find ways to enable every student to achieve gateway competencies. It would give students the support necessary to achieve their full potential and allow them to pursue personal objectives such as job and language skills, social-emotional development and achievements in science or the arts. Most importantly, if something was not working, or a student’s needs were not being met, an agile education system would be equipped to change. Looking beyond merely a portfolio of schools, a broader student-centered system would be animated by a drive to do whatever is necessary to prepare every student to solve the problems and capitalize on the opportunities that await the next generation. Read the full proposal .

Retraining Teachers — How personalization, specialization, soft skills and a talent shortage will reshape the profession: A rapidly changing future has implications not just for learners but also for educators. What might it mean for who teaches what — and how? In a new analysis, we consider the broader future of the teaching profession, from how instructors will be required to expand their expertise to how schools and districts will be forced to rethink issues of recruitment, development and collaboration. In particular, the paper identifies two areas of teacher expertise beyond academics that will become increasingly important and spotlights emerging ideas about how to challenge the one-teacher, one-classroom model while making the job more manageable. The authors also underscore the need to cast a wider net in engaging a broader community in the conversation about what quality teaching looks like for the next generation. “The future of teaching may be less about knowing the answer,” the authors write, “and more about rethinking who asks the questions and works to solve emerging problems.” Read the full thinkpiece .

Redistributing Funding — How routing dollars to students instead of schools could fund a more nimble system: In a more nimble public education system, all students would have equitable access to learning opportunities during the summer, outside the normal school day and beyond the school walls. Students would also continue to have access to these learning opportunities, supplemental support and postsecondary education opportunities later in life. And students from special populations — those who are gifted and low-income, those with disabilities, those who are not native English speakers or who lack stable home environments — would have access to educational programs tailored to their circumstances. One policy could help enable all of them: personalized education funding. Rather than states and local governments allocating funding to specific public schools, students themselves would receive funding based on their needs and circumstances, and could then plan with their parents to direct this money toward their educational needs: basic school attendance, tutoring, therapy or supplemental learning experiences. Read the full analysis .

Restructuring Education Systems — How can an innovative approach to school governance balance a need for experimentation with a parent’s right to make informed choices?: A local public education system built for personalization and rapid adjustment to workforce demands must be open to innovation and make full use of learning opportunities outside of conventional schools. But that system cannot be so atomized, chaotic or dominated by irresponsible providers that families are ultimately unable to make informed choices for their children. Families need a comprehensible set of options and information about likely results for students, and communities need options that prepare young people for jobs that are likely to exist. Still, this need for some degree of order and process must not drive out innovation and responsiveness to change. Students must be free to pursue — and providers free to offer — learning experiences that community leaders might not understand or prefer. Paul Hill takes the long view on how to balance these essential, conflicting needs. Read the full commentary .

Empowering Change — Why America’s educators are ready to innovate (but their education systems are not): Designed more than 100 years ago, America’s public education system is not preparing students for today’s realities of civic and global competitiveness — much less tomorrow’s. Consider the facts: U.S. students are scoring poorly in math and science compared with students in other industrialized countries, and they’re not graduating with the necessary skills or knowledge to succeed in college. Think about social mobility, and the situation grows even starker: Children from high-income families are 10 times as likely as other children to become inventors; NAEP fourth-grade achievements show that only 8.6 percent of students with disabilities scored proficient in reading; and rural students have less access to high-speed internet, AP coursework and extracurricular opportunities, leaving them more likely to “undermatch” themselves when applying to colleges. There is no single answer, but for every solution tried, there is one common theme: Educators, students and families who want something better are thwarted by an outdated delivery model. Robin Lake pens an in-depth analysis of the current educational system — and why she says it will not deliver in preparing students to solve the problems of an unpredictable future society. Read the full analysis .

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What Changes to the U.S. Education System Are Needed to Support Long-Term Success for All Americans?

With the pandemic deepening inequities that threaten students’ prospects, the vice president of the Corporation’s National Program provides a vision for transforming our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures 

At no point in our nation’s history have we asked so much of our education system as we do today. We ask that our primary and secondary schools prepare all students, regardless of background, for a lifetime of learning. We ask that teachers guide every child toward deeper understanding while simultaneously attending to their social-emotional development. And we ask that our institutions of higher learning serve students with a far broader range of life circumstances than ever before.

We ask these things of education because the future we aspire to requires it. The nature of work and civic participation is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and social media are driving rapid changes in how we interact with each other and what skills hold value. In the world our children will inherit, their ability to adapt, think critically, and work effectively with others will be essential for both their own success and the well-being of society.

At Carnegie Corporation of New York, we focus on supporting people who are in a position to meet this challenge. That includes the full spectrum of educators, administrators, family members, and others who shape young people’s learning experiences as they progress toward and into adulthood. Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

All of our work is geared toward transforming student learning. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for success today call for a vastly different set of learning experiences than may have sufficed in the past. Students must play a more active role in their own learning, and that learning must encompass more than subject-matter knowledge. Preparing all children for success requires greater attention to inclusiveness in the classroom, differentiation in teaching and learning, and universal high expectations.

This transformation needs to happen in higher education as well. A high school education is no longer enough to ensure financial security. We need more high-quality postsecondary options, better guidance for students as they transition beyond high school, and sufficient supports to enable all students to complete their postsecondary programs. Preparing students for lifelong success requires stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and work.

The need for such transformation has become all the more urgent in the face of COVID-19. As with past economic crises, the downturn resulting from the pandemic is likely to accelerate the erosion of opportunities for low-skilled workers with only a high school education. Investments in innovative learning models and student supports are critical to preventing further inequities in learning outcomes. 

An Urgent Call for Advancing Equity 

The 2020–21 school year may prove to be the most consequential in American history. With unfathomable speed, COVID-19 has forced more change in how schools operate than in the previous half century.

What is most concerning in all of this is the impact on the most underserved and historically marginalized in our society: low-income children and students of color. Even before the current crisis, the future prospects of a young person today looked very different depending on the color of her skin and the zip code in which she grew up, but the pandemic exposed and exacerbated long-standing racial and economic inequities. And the same families who are faring worst in terms of disrupted schooling are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn and disproportionately getting sick, being hospitalized, and dying.

Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

Every organization that is committed to educational improvement needs to ask itself what it can do differently to further advance the cause of educational equity during this continuing crisis so that we can make lasting improvements. As we know from past experience, if the goal of equity is not kept front and center, those who are already behind through no fault of their own will benefit the least. If ever there were a time to heed this caution, it is now.

We hope that our nation will approach education with a new sense of purpose and a shared commitment to ensuring that our schools truly work for every child. Whether or not that happens will depend on our resolve and our actions in the coming months. We have the proof points and know-how to transform learning, bolster instruction, and meet the needs of our most disadvantaged students. What has changed is the urgency for doing so at scale.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have. We need to reimagine the systems that shape student learning and put the communities whose circumstances we most need to elevate at the center of that process. We need to recognize that we will not improve student outcomes without building the capacity of the adults who work with them, supporting them with high-quality resources and meaningful opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. We need to promote stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and employment so that all students are prepared for lifelong success.

The pandemic has deepened inequities that threaten students’ prospects. But if we seize this moment and learn from it, if we marshal the necessary resources, we have the potential to transform our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures.

In a pandemic-induced moment when the American education system has been blown into 25 million homes across the country, where do we go from here?

We Must Learn to Act in New Ways

These are not controversial ideas. In fact, they constitute the general consensus about where American education needs to go. But they also represent a tall order for the people who influence the system. Practically everyone who plays a part in education must learn to act in new ways.

That we have made progress in such areas as high school completion, college-going rates, and the adoption of college- and career-ready standards is a testament to the commitment of those working in the field. But it will take more than commitment to achieve the changes in student learning that our times demand. We can’t expect individuals to figure out what they need to do on their own, nor should we be surprised if they struggle to do so when working in institutional structures designed to produce different outcomes. The transformation we seek calls for much greater coordination and a broader set of allies than would suffice for more incremental changes.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have.

Our best hope for achieving equity and the transformation of student learning is to enhance adults’ ability to contribute to that learning. That means building their capacity while supporting their authentic engagement in promoting a high-quality education for every child. It also means ensuring that people operate within systems that are optimized to support their effectiveness and that a growing body of knowledge informs their efforts.

These notions comprise our overarching strategy for promoting the systems change needed to transform student learning experiences on a large scale. We seek to enhance adult capacity and stakeholder engagement in the service of ensuring that all students are prepared to meet the demands of the 21st century. We also support knowledge development and organizational improvement to the extent that investments in these areas enhance adult capacity, stakeholder engagement, and student experiences.

Five Ways We Invest in the Future of Students

These views on how best to promote systems change in education guide our philanthropic work. The strategic areas of change we focus on are major themes throughout our five investment portfolios. Although they are managed separately and support different types of initiatives, each seeks to address its area of focus from multiple angles. A single portfolio may include grants that build adult capacity, enhance stakeholder engagement, and generate new knowledge.

New Designs to Advance Learning

Preparing all students for success requires that we fundamentally reimagine our nation’s schools and classrooms. Our public education system needs to catch up with how the world is evolving and with what we’ve come to understand about how people learn. That means attending to a broader diversity of learning styles and bringing what happens in school into greater alignment with what happens in the worlds of work and civic life. We make investments to increase the number of innovative learning models that support personalized experiences, academic mastery, and positive youth development. We also make investments that build the capacity of districts and intermediaries to improve learning experiences for all students as well as grants to investigate relevant issues of policy and practice.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

Lifelong success in the United States has never been more dependent on educational attainment than it is today. Completing some education beyond the 12th grade has virtually become a necessity for financial security and meaningful work. But for that possibility to exist for everyone, we need to address the historical barriers that keep many students from pursuing and completing a postsecondary program, and we must strengthen the options available to all students for education after high school. Through our investments, we seek to increase the number of young people able to access and complete a postsecondary program, with a major focus on removing historical barriers for students who are first-generation college-goers, low-income, or from underrepresented groups. We also look to expand the range of high-quality postsecondary options and to strengthen alignment between K–12, higher education, and the world of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

At its core, learning is about the interplay between teachers, students, and content. How teachers and students engage with each other and with their curriculum plays a predominant role in determining what students learn and how well they learn it. That’s not to say that factors outside of school don’t also greatly impact student learning. But the research is clear that among the factors a school might control, nothing outweighs the teaching that students experience. We focus on supporting educators in implementing rigorous college- and career-ready standards in math, science, and English language arts. We make investments to increase the supply of and demand for high-quality curricular materials and professional learning experiences for teachers and administrators.

Public Understanding

As central as they are to the education process, school professionals are hardly the only people with a critical role to play in student learning. Students spend far more time with family and other community members than they do at school. And numerous stakeholders outside of the education system have the potential to strengthen and shape what happens within it. The success of our nation’s schools depends on far more individuals than are employed by them. 

We invest in efforts to engage families and other stakeholders as active partners in supporting equitable access to high-quality student learning. We also support media organizations and policy research groups in building awareness about key issues related to educational equity and improvement.

Integration, Learning, and Innovation

Those of us who work for change in education need a new set of habits to achieve our vision of 21st-century learning. It will take more than a factory-model mindset to transform our education system into one that prepares all learners for an increasingly complex world. We must approach this task with flexibility, empathy for the people involved, and an understanding of how to learn from what’s working and what’s not. We work to reduce the fragmentation, inefficiencies, and missteps that often result when educational improvement strategies are pursued in isolation and without an understanding of the contexts in which they are implemented. Through grants and other activities, we build the capacity of people working in educational organizations to change how they work by emphasizing systems and design thinking, iteration, and knowledge sharing within and across organizations.

Two recent surveys by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup offer insights into how our education system can better help all Americans navigate job and career choices

Join Us in This Ambitious Endeavor

Our approach of supporting multiple stakeholders by pulling multiple levers is informed by our deep understanding of the system we’re trying to move. American education is a massive, diverse, and highly decentralized enterprise. There is no mechanism by which we might affect more than superficial change in many thousands of communities. The type of change that is needed cannot come from compliance alone. It requires that everyone grapple with new ideas.

We know from our history of promoting large-scale improvements in American education that advancements won’t happen overnight or as the result of one kind of initiative. Our vision for 21st-century education will require more than quick wins and isolated successes. Innovation is essential, and a major thrust of our work involves the incubation and dissemination of new models, resources, and exemplars. But we must also learn to move forward with the empathy, flexibility, and systems thinking needed to support people in making the transition. Novel solutions only help if they can be successfully implemented in different contexts.

Only a sustained and concerted effort will shift the center of gravity of a social enterprise that involves millions of adults and many tens of millions of young people. The challenge of philanthropy is to effect widespread social change with limited resources and without formal authority. This takes more than grantmaking. At the Corporation, we convene, communicate, and form coalitions. We provide thought leadership, issue challenges, and launch new initiatives. Through these multifaceted activities, we maximize our ability to forge, share, and put into practice powerful new ideas that build a foundation for more substantial changes in the future.

We encourage everyone who plays a role in education to join us in this work. Our strategy represents more than our priorities as a grantmaker. It conveys our strong beliefs about how to get American education to where it needs to be. The more organizations and individuals we have supporting those who are working to provide students with what they need, the more likely we are to succeed in this ambitious endeavor. 

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan is the vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and the program director for Education.

TOP: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a lower-school substitute teacher works from her home in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1, 2020. Her role in the school changed significantly due to the pandemic. Whereas she previously worked part-time to support teachers when they needed to be absent from the classroom, amid COVID-19 she now helps teachers to build skills with new digital platforms so they can continue to teach in the best way for their students and their families. (Credit: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Whether you call it digital, information, news, visual, or media literacy — it is vital for civic engagement and democracy

Addressing post-pandemic learning loss should include far greater support for programs that involve parents and caregivers in their kids’ educations

Essay on New Education Policy 2020

500+ words essay on new education policy 2020.

Education is a fundamental need and right of everyone now. In order to achieve our goals and help develop a just society, we need education. Similarly, education plays a great role in the national development of a nation. As we are facing a major change in terms of knowledge globally, the Government of India approved the National Education Policy 2020. This essay on new education policy 2020 will help you learn how this new policy has replaced the National Education Policy 1986 that is 34 years old.

Aim of the New Education Policy 2020

This new policy has the aim of universalizing education from pre-school to secondary level. It plans to do that with a 100% GRE (Gross Enrollment Ratio) in schooling. The plan is to achieve it by 2030.

This essay on new education policy 2020 will highlight the changes brought in by this new policy. Firstly, the policy proposes to open Indian higher education in foreign universities.

It aims to introduce a four-year multidisciplinary undergraduate program with various exit options. Thus, this new policy will strive to make the country of India a global knowledge superpower.

Similarly, it also aims to make all universities and colleges multi-disciplinary by the year 2040. Finally, the policy aims to grow employment in India and also bring fundamental changes to the present educational system.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Advantages and Disadvantages of New Education Policy 2020

The policy gives an advantage to students of classes 10 and 12 by making the board exams easier. In other words, it plans to test the core competencies instead of mere memorization of facts.

It will allow all the students to take the exam twice. Further, it proposes that an independent authority will be responsible for regulating both public and private schools . Similarly, the policy aims to diminish any severe separation between the educational streams and vocational streams in the schools.

There will also be no rigid division between extra-curriculum. Vocational education will begin at class sixth with an internship. Now, the essay on new education policy 2020 will tell you about the disadvantages of the policy.

Firstly, it can make the education system expensive. Meaning to say, admission to foreign universities will probably result in this. Further, it will create a lack of human resources.

If we look at the present elementary education, we notice that there is a lack of skilled teachers. Thus, keeping this in mind, the National Education Policy 2020 can give rise to practical problems in implementing the system that is for elementary education.

Finally, there is also the drawback of the exodus of teachers. In other words, admission to foreign universities will ultimately result in our skilled teachers migrating to those universities.

To conclude the essay on New Education Policy 2020, we can say that this policy is an essential initiative to help in the all-around development of our society and country as a whole. However, the implementation of this policy will greatly determine its success. Nonetheless, with a youth dominant population, India can truly achieve a better state with the proper implementation of this education policy.

FAQ of Essay on New Education Policy 2020

Question 1: What does the New Education Policy 2020 aim to achieve by 2030?

Answer 1: This new policy has the aim of universalizing education from pre-school to secondary level. It plans to do that with a 100% GRE (Gross Enrollment Ratio) in schooling. The plan is to achieve it by 2030.

Question 2: Give two challenges the New Education Policy 2020 may face?

Answer 2: Firstly, it can make the education system expensive. Meaning to say, admission to foreign universities will probably result in this. Further, it will create a lack of human resources.

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Education and inequality in 2021: how to change the system

Research Associate at the University of Geneva's department of Education and Psychology; Campus and Secondary Principal at the International School of Geneva's La Grande Boissière, Université de Genève

Disclosure statement

Conrad Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

AUF (Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie) provides funding as a member of The Conversation FR.

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Since its earliest traces, at least 5,000 years ago , formal education – meaning an education centred on literacy and numeracy – has always been highly selective. Ancient Egyptian priest schools and schools for scribes in Sumeria were only open to the children of the clergy or future monarchs.

Later on, the wealthy would use private tutors, such as the Sophists of Athens (500 - 400 BCE). Ancient Greek schools, such as Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum , were restricted to a small elite group. Formal education was reserved for male children who were wealthy, able, and privileged.

Through time, even after learning societies began to flourish, it was still an education for some and not for everybody.

In the 1800s Black people were denied access to quality education in the United States. In European colonies, education was used to strip people of their cultural heritage and relegate them to a future of menial labour.

Education has always been less accessible to women than men. Even today, over 130 million girls are still out of school. Although the difference between girls and boys is lessening, the disparity disadvantaging girls persists . From a socioeconomic perspective, in many countries, private schools continue to grow alongside compulsory state schools, offering a different style of education, sometimes at a very high price.

Today, progress to attain the dream of universal access to education is slow. UNESCO’s Education for All and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 , which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, are still far from materialising: roughly 260 million children are still not in school . The COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation worse: remote learning is inaccessible to roughly 500 million students . Estimates are that over 200 million children will still be out of school by 2030 .

In my study “Education and Elitism” , the overarching question that runs through the book is about the future of education worldwide: What are the prospects for the future? Are we facing an even more enclaved, pauperised majority while a tiny minority become more powerful and wealthy?

Certain paths could open up. On the one hand, places in selective institutions could become even more difficult to access while private education strips ahead of national standards. On the other hand, changes might make education more inclusive: this would include scholarships, cheaper private education, more robust state systems and deep assessment reform.

Prospects for the future

Scholarship programmes: These allow the brightest and poorest access to transformative learning ecosystems . However, this contributes to a brain drain and does not develop the local educational sector , particularly in Africa.

Cheaper private education: A movement of accessible private schools is growing . This allows more children to access some of the value-added features of such systems – more curriculum flexibility, smaller class sizes, more individual student tracking. However, there are reports that this is widening social divides , as the public system isn’t improving fast enough to keep up.

More robust state systems: UNESCO estimates that it would cost a total of US$340 billion each year to achieve universal pre-primary, primary, and secondary education in low- and lower-middle-income countries by 2030. The average annual per-student spending for quality primary education in a low-income country is predicted to be US$197 in 2030. This creates an estimated annual gap of US$39 billion between 2015 and 2030. Financing this gap calls for action from private sector donors, philanthropists, and international financial institutions.

Online learning: The COVID-19 lockdown has brought inequalities to the surface. However, the rise of online learning worldwide has been phenomenal. This opens up the potential to widen access to learning socioeconomically and, if delivered by skilled facilitators, academically . There is a problem, though: online instruction lacks the emotional quantum that face-to-face learning creates. Because of this, motivation levels and persistence tend to be low in online learning environments . And importantly, in many countries, many students still don’t have access to the internet.

A way forward: reforming the system

Perhaps the most substantive movement to reduce inequalities would not be to accelerate access to a broken system but to reform the system itself .

It is time to look further than narrow academic metrics as the only way of describing young people’s competences. The whole educational system across high schools, in every country, needs to change dramatically. Assessment models should recognise and nurture more varied and multiple competences, in particular, attitudes, skills and types of knowledge beyond those concentrated in constructs that are favoured by socioeconomic background, such as literacy and numeracy .

Read more: Education needs a refocus so that all learners reach their full potential

Until universities and employers look beyond traditional metrics, it will be difficult to break a circuit that favours, for the large part, middle class, socially and ethnically privileged candidates.

To truly break away from a millennia of elitist, selective systems , the approach needs to move from pure academics to a credit system that captures many more stories of learning. This new credit system should be known as a passport, meaning students have stamped it with the various competences such as lifelong learning and self-agency that they have developed throughout their learning (in an out of school), allowing them to be recognised on numerous different fronts.

A coalition of schools from every continent is working on this project, now seeking universities to sit around the table in order to bring this work to its conclusion. This would mean co-designing an elegant, life worthy transcript to allow more access to more children based on more expansive criteria.

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What Students Are Saying About How to Improve American Education

An international exam shows that American 15-year-olds are stagnant in reading and math. Teenagers told us what’s working and what’s not in the American education system.

By The Learning Network

Earlier this month, the Program for International Student Assessment announced that the performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000 . Other recent studies revealed that two-thirds of American children were not proficient readers , and that the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening.

We asked students to weigh in on these findings and to tell us their suggestions for how they would improve the American education system.

Our prompt received nearly 300 comments. This was clearly a subject that many teenagers were passionate about. They offered a variety of suggestions on how they felt schools could be improved to better teach and prepare students for life after graduation.

While we usually highlight three of our most popular writing prompts in our Current Events Conversation , this week we are only rounding up comments for this one prompt so we can honor the many students who wrote in.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

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