Are we assessing learners for outdated skills? 'Yes'says OECD. Bob Harrison attends a milestone presentation by PISA expert Andreas Schleicher.

Citizens and workers of the 21st century need a new set of skills according to a new global partnership of high-tech giants Intel, Microsoft and Cisco who are working for systemic change in national education systems. And their contribution has been welcomed by Andreas Schleicher (below), head of indicators and analysis at the organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the man responsible for PISA, the ‘international league table’ for national education performance.

“Transforming Education: Assessing and Teaching 21st Century Skills” is a challenge to the self sustaining and highly regulated world of education and assessment which, according to these three IT giants, is failing to prepare our young people for work and life in this century. They have engaged Australian academic Dr Barry McGaw, of the University of Melbourne, as project executive director of the international team tasked with identifying 21st Century skills and how they could be taught and assessed. Andreas Schleicher hopes to be able to use the findings for a framework which can support countries wishing to transform their learning and teaching.

Andreas Schleicher’s presentation (download here) at the Learning and Technology World Forum (LATWF) in London in January was one of the clearest expositions yet of the key education dilemma facing industrialised nations. The easiest skills to teach are those skills which are also the simplest to digitise and replicate with machinery. In short, industry and society require citizens with highly developed problem-solving skills; but education systems designed in another era are not capable of delivering them.

It was a speech that set the tone for a week that, including the four-day BETT 2009 show, proved significant for learning and teaching with ICT. And a brand new social networking service for school leaders engaged in transforming learning and teaching, sponsored by Cisco, was also launched. Getideas.org was also used for the 500 delegates attending LATWF to share and spread ideas.
Intel Microsoft and Cisco argue that in contemporary business people work in teams across disciplinary boundaries and use a variety of social, digital and physical resources, informed but unconstrained by disciplinary knowledge to solve complex problems.

In a statement issued at the launch they go on: “They create new ideas, products and services and share these with colleagues, customers, or an even larger audience and there is a need to work flexibly in response to complex problems, manage information, communicate effectively, work in teams and produce new knowledge.”

How far does our education system reflect these demands? Not much

The key question is how far does our education and assessment system reflect these demands? “Not much,” appears to be the concern of these major IT partners in education transformation. They say, “Most educational systems operate much as they did at the beginning of 20th Century… Significant reform is needed in education worldwide… but reform is particularly needed in education assessment.”
It is helpful therefore for the campaign to enjoy the support of the PISA, as Andreas Schleicher appears committed to promulgating the findings of Dr Barry McGaw.

Cisco, Intel and Microsoft now hope to enlist the support of political, education and business leaders. And Getideas.org is intended as a global vehicle to support this.

LATWF was also the setting a welcome visit from former DCSF director of strategy and communication directorate  Michael Stevenson, now Cisco’s vice-president for global education and a key player in “Transforming Education: Assessing and Teaching 21st Century Skills”. In a prescient interview posted as a PDF transcript and a podcast last year, he says: “It's about identifying the skills that young people need to flourish in today's economy and society - critical thinking, complex problem-solving, creativity, collaboration.”

“Now to get to those skills, we're going to need to do teaching and learning in different ways. Very often, it won't be the old subject-bound, fact-based approach; it'll be project-based. It'll be across subject boundaries. It'll be drawing experts into the work. It'll be focusing on real-world problems. That kind of learning, we believe, is best set up to deliver those skills.

“And if you look at the collaborative technologies, they're there for a purpose. They, because they focus on collaboration and creativity in their nature, are the best equipped in a wider teaching environment to support that kind of teaching and learning.”

More information
To register with Getideas.org visit http://getideas.org/
To contribute to the project email executive director Dr Barry McGaw at bmcgaw@unimelb.edu.a

Bob Harrison is an NCSL consultant, teacher, school and college governor, education adviser for Toshiba and also works with Becta and the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills. He can be contacted at www.setuk.co.uk.