Global School Leaders (English Session)
24 March 2026 - Online
14 engaged | India, Australia, Malaysia
By: Denise Shillinglaw
What will it take to equip students to shape a better future?
At its core, this question is not isolated—it is part of a broader system. What we choose upstream in education inevitably shapes what unfolds downstream. At the centre of this flow are students of all ages, whose futures are deeply influenced by the decisions adults make today.
From this perspective, three interconnected areas emerge as essential in preparing young people to shape a better future:
1. People: Developing the capacities to live, think, and relate
Education must prioritise the development of human capabilities—both interpersonal and intercultural.
Interpersonal capacities include compassion, kindness, and forgiveness; resilience in the face of fear-based narratives; and the mental agility to think deeply and deliberately. This also requires cultivating reading stamina, a commitment to truth-seeking, and a sense of collective responsibility—caring for one another in a world where future work is likely to centre increasingly on care.
Intercultural capacities involve engaging meaningfully with history and its lessons, including the realities of colonisation. Students must learn to value and preserve shared knowledge systems, respect the rights and wisdom of Indigenous communities, and develop the ability to hold multiple perspectives. A future-oriented education system should normalise reciprocal exchange across cultures, grounded in empathy and mutual respect.
2. Work: Rethinking purpose, agency, and economic systems
In a time of global instability—marked by environmental, economic, and social disruption—we must fundamentally reconsider what “work” means and what it is for.
Preparing students for the future requires more than employability; it calls for agency. Young people must have a voice in decisions that shape their lives and societies, including those decisions that challenge existing systems. This includes agency in caring for themselves, for others, and for the planet.
Education systems must also engage with deeper questions:
What kinds of work do young people want to pursue?
How must institutions and structures evolve to support these aspirations?
This rethinking extends to economic systems themselves—toward models that prioritise well-being, sustainability, and meaningful contribution over narrow definitions of growth.
3. Planet: Cultivating long-term, ecological consciousness
Any vision for the future must begin with a simple truth: we have only one planet.
Students need to develop an attunement to the natural world—what might be called a “sensory intelligence” that enables them to notice, understand, and care for their environment. This includes integrating the best of modern technologies with Indigenous knowledge systems, and learning practices such as “caring for country.”
Curriculum, in turn, must be simplified and refocused to enable deep thinking within the fundamental conditions of life: water, soil, air, trees, fire, time, and space. A long-term perspective—beyond immediate outcomes—must guide both what and how we teach.
4. Resistance: Challenging the status quo
Finally, there is a fourth, critical dimension: resistance.
To shape a better future, students must be equipped not only to participate in existing systems, but to question and transform them. This includes resisting entrenched beliefs, outdated models, and power structures that no longer serve humanity or the planet.
Across the world, many educators, thinkers, and changemakers are already engaging in this work. Preparing students to join—and lead—this movement of thoughtful resistance may be one of the most important responsibilities of education today.
Taken together, these reflections point to an education that is deeply human, future-oriented, and grounded in reality. While much of this may resist easy quantification, it reflects a broader truth: education, as it currently stands, is not fully preparing students for a future that adults themselves continue to destabilise. There remains a growing disconnect between what we ask of young people—fairness, empathy, responsibility—and what they observe in the adult world. These values are rarely modelled or celebrated at scale, with fear often dominating public discourse. Addressing this gap may be one of the most urgent—and complex—challenges facing education today.