Looking Beyond the Grades

Careers advice at Surbiton High School

It is widely accepted and expected that students of today will have at least seven jobs in quite possibly seven industries and could work until they are 70. Highly attuned skills, capabilities and knowledge about how to work in constantly evolving industries with a proactive, engaging and inquisitive mindset will enable young people today to thrive in this new world order.

The World Economic Forum has for decades accounted for and articulated global industry’s needs and wants; communicating to the world (governments, educators, business) future needs; anticipating what will happen in the near future and the skills that will be required for individuals to thrive.

The current top five skills prediction for 2025 are:

Analytical thinking and innovation Active learning and learning strategies Complex problem-solving Critical thinking and analysis Creativity, originality and initiative

Could education help provide an effective and secure foundation level in these skills? From Reception to Year 13, we have 14 years to develop these skills in the future generations. The world is moving towards automation and technological integration at an intensity that we have not seen since globalisation and the internet burst onto the scene in the late 1990s. However, the world of work has not vanished, today’s school children will develop a career, or seven. How do we prepare those who will work in 2025? Pupils at Surbiton High School are academically very able, have high levels of self-motivation and are taught by expert teachers, leading to great exam results. We should not rest on our laurels, keeping our mind and actions directed towards the all-important marginal gains that will assist pupils as they navigate their future careers.

Looking ahead is what we excel at here at Surbiton High School. In 2014, we articulated and defined a suite of learning habits that underpin our curriculum. Taking a holistic approach to developing confidence, perseverance and independence throughout every part of school life from subject lessons to PSHE days and our fulfilling co-curricular programme, enables our students to develop their behaviours and selfawareness, how they learn best and how to adjust their responses or behaviours in varying situations.

Industries of the future include a mind-boggling list ranging from sun-powered chemistry to digital medicine and spatial computing. This list continues to evolve with increasing intensity, creating jobs we do not understand in industries that have not yet been born. Rather than react negatively, let us remind ourselves that the skills of a person, not their grades, ultimately gains them access to these new industries, working in fields that were once science fiction.

2025: Jobs of the future

Data Analysts Date Scientists AI Programmers Machine Learning Specialists Digital Marketing and Strategy Process Autonomation Specialists Business Development Professionals Information Security Specialists Project Managers Robotics Engineers FinTech Engineers Risk Management Specialists