Redesigning Schooling – A Vision for education – beyond five-year policy cycles

This ambitious pamphlet envisages the fulfilment of a new paradigm for education: a system based on high equity, high quality, and the concept of agency, by which learners, teachers and leaders are empowered to act to achieve their aims. The Vision 2040 group was formed in 2013 at the start of SSAT’s Redesigning Schooling campaign. The group set about the task of envisaging what they hoped education would look like in 2040, and worked back from that point. The remit was informed through school-based action research projects within and across their schools.

The story follows 25 years in the professional life of a newly qualified teacher in 2015, tracking the key events and milestones that, by 2040, have revolutionised the education system as we know it now. This creative venture enabled the authors to rise above the inherent short-termism of the policy cycle that so often stifles long-term strategic thinking and the profession’s ability to agree on a shared purpose for education. The authors’ approach engages readers in thinking about the journey ahead, taking the best of what we do forward while abandoning those things which hold us back; discussing and debating key ideas; and influencing the next generation of education policies.

There are concrete steps that need to be taken to ensure congruence between the culture that we believe should exist within the education system, and the construct of the system itself.

The Vision 2040 group and SSAT implore you to read it, talk about it, challenge it, or write your own vision for 2040. But most importantly, we ask that you share it, with your colleagues, your students’ parents, your governors, and the employers and other stakeholders you work with.