First Meeting of the International Commission on the Futures of Education

The mandate of the International Commission on the Futures of Education is to collectively reflect on how education might need to be re-thought in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity.

The Commission will present analysis and recommendations in the form of a report which will serve as an agenda for policy dialogue and action at multiple levels. Looking at the year 2050 and beyond, the report will suggest visions and strategies for both education policy and education practice to adopt.

The Commission is to take into consideration recent geopolitical shifts, accelerated environmental degradation and climate change, changing patterns of human mobility, and the exponential pace of scientific and technological innovation. At the same time, the report should envisage and analyse the multiple possible futures of technological, social, economic, and environmental disruption and how education might both affect and be affected by these futures.

The Commission will include in its report a consideration of the longstanding UNESCO commitment to an integrated and humanistic approach to education and knowledge as public goods. The Commission is invited to challenge and re-evaluate the foundational principles laid out in previous UNESCO global reports about education.

In sum, the Commission will focus on rethinking the role of education, learning and knowledge in light of the tremendous challenges and opportunities of predicted, possible, and preferred futures.

Detailed agenda to be confirmed.