Administrator's Corner
Five Prophecies about the Future
of Schooling
By Mark S. Steed
The Challenge
According to UNESCO (Institute of
Statistics, 2013), the world will need 3.3
million more primary teachers and 5.1
million more lower Secondary teachers
by 2030. There is no easy solution
to this problem, but I believe that
lessons from how the Middle East is
addressing the problem may provide a
solution that will work in other parts of
the world.
You might ask, ‘Why would a solution
come from the Middle East? Why not
from the most developed Educational
systems of Europe and North America?’
Well, I believe that the answer to that
lies in what Clayton M. Christensen of
the Harvard University Business School,
calls ‘Disruptive Innovations’ - i.e.
innovations which transform the entire
form of organization and management
of established institutions. Christensen
argues that one of the characteristics
of ‘Disruptive Innovations’ is that they
‘originate in Low-End and New-Market
footholds.’ On this basis, it is more
likely that a solution to the Learning-
Schooling problem would be found in
the emerging educational market of
Dubai rather than in the established
setting of the UK or US state and
independent sectors. size, the range of facilities available
in the school, the qualifications of
teachers, and the amount of teacher-
pupil contact time in the week.
So what lessons can we learn from the
For-Profit sector in Dubai? Nord Anglia have developed the Nord
Anglia University as a global CPD portal
for teachers. GEMS have developed
a shared VLE for their schools and
have introduced ‘blended learning’
programmes which have moved the
process of teaching and learning away
from the traditional model of a teacher
standing in front of a class.
The Dubai For-Profit Sector
The For-Profit sector in Dubai,
unsurprisingly is driven by the
economic drivers of ‘return-on-
investment’, ‘economies of scale’,
scalability, differentiated markets
and keeping costs down – especially
of staffing. However, there are three
important characteristics of the For-
Profit sector that, I believe, will shape
global schooling in the future:
1. The For-Profit groups offer
education at different price points:
2. The For-Profit Groups invest in
central I.T. systems:
this article continues on page #27
THE FUTURE OF LEARNING AND THE PROSPECT OF SCHOOLING
O
ne of the greatest challenges for
Education in the 21 st Century is
that there is an ever-increasing
divide between the demand for
learning and the supply of schooling.
This is seen most obviously in the global
shortage of teachers, but it extends to
the dearth of school leaders, and to the
unavailability of schools themselves.
LEARNING
The For-Profit groups offer Premium,
Mid-range and Budget in the same
way that airlines offer First Class,
Business and Economy seats on their
planes. The differentiators between
the price points are school and class
Class Time
LEARNING
TIME
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