A Radical Rethink: What Covid-19 teaches us about the future of school education Andrew Watson and Richard Calland
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n the wake of death, Covid-19 has wrought a pandemic of decipher the longer-term implications for school education. If they pain, suffering and introspection. Within our various states of do, they will have to confront the biggest and toughest question: suspended animation around the world, it has also introduced are their schools fit for future purpose? Our underlying rebuttable a level of uncertainty that many people have never or rarely proposition is this: education is part of the problem – today’s encountered before. Individually and leadership, who all went to school, have got us collectively, we have been forced into an into this mess – but also part of the solution; intellectual, economic and social exile, radical reform of the way in which tomorrow’s If there is anything compelling us to ask: what possible good can leaders are educated can help prepare today’s come of this traumatic experience? students for the challenge they will face. that Covid-19 has Despite the profound sense of uncertainty, The Covid-19 pandemic is a systemic failure. taught millions of there is one certainty that stands out: the Those who are willing and able to join the way in which we educate the young must dots between the ecological, economic and professionals across change, for two reasons. First, if we are to political causes will recognise it as such. Clearly, the globe, it is how to therefore, it requires a system-level analysis avoid repeating the mistakes that got us to this point of crisis, in which leadership a system-level response. As a key part engage remotely using and has failed to correct the unsustainable path of the broader ecosystem, the education modern technology. sector needs to reflect hard, and fast, on its that humanity had taken, then we have to develop future leaders with a very different priorities: on what the experience of teaching mindset and value system. Second, we need and learning provides for young people. It to prepare them for an even more difficult needs to reconsider why schools exist. Just and dangerous world that, as the Coronavirus shows, will face as private enterprise has been increasingly forcefully asked to challenges of unprecedented scale, complexity and urgency. articulate its societal purpose, so schools need to define why they In the short-term, it has been essential for schools to create exist in terms of what they ‘deliver’ to a particular vision of society. health, fiscal, and educational plans for the 2020-21 academic year This is the why question. But school leaders will also have to think – to offset the many and varied likely negative effects of Covid-19. deeply about what they teach – curricula based on linear learning, But those school leaders who are willing to show strategic in which subjects such as mathematics or history or geography foresight will be looking beyond the immediate crisis to try to are largely still taught in bubbles largely unconnected from one 18 | International School | Winter 2020
