Ecoles Pour L’Avenir — a vision for the schools of the future

In his celebrated TED talk, Ken Robinson maintains that education is a subject that we are all equally passionate about. We have all experienced education in some form, whether that’s through the schools we went to as children, the ones we send our children to, or, for those of us who work in education, through the ones — formal or informal — where we work.

I had a marvellous primary school growing up in Hong Kong, an international school that emphasised the importance of the arts and creativity whilst I studied alongside a vast mix of nationalities in a cosmopolitan and stimulating learning environment. Contrast this with my return to the UK for senior school where I attended an elite private girls school, complete with uniforms, detentions and a pretty much single-minded focus on academic success. Although both private schools, the ethos and values of each school could not have been more different and, whilst I thrived in one, I became a shadow of myself in the other.

I remember taking one of those tests that suggest possible career choices, a paper questionnaire then fed into a computer that asked me such questions as ‘do you like reading?’ (yes) from which they suggested a possible career as a librarian. My interest in theatre was detected but with little other information on which to base my interest, echoed the superficiality of the questions through proposing a career on the stage, irrespective of whether I had any actual talent in that area.

Fast forward 30 years and, I believe, most of my achievements have been in spite of my education, not because of it. When I finally had the courage to study what I most loved (theatre), despite my conservative school discouraging it, I thrived and started to learn about ways of learning that empowered my potential, not undermine it. Entrepreneurship, for example, was never an option on the table at my elite private school, despite the fact that ‘a job for life’ is no longer guaranteed and we all need to be entrepreneurial in developing portfolio careers. It has taken me most of my adult life to have the confidence in my role as an innovator and leader and not someone who neatly fits into the status quo of a regular job as an accountant, lawyer or consultant. I expect few people really do fit this mould, but it is certainly what our education systems equip us for, and not the huge array of professions, workplaces, lifestyles, and, above all, the technology that is shaping our world right now.

Our school systems need to reflect the world we are growing into, a world dominated by technology, for sure, but a world also in crisis, dealing with increasing nationalism, climate change and multiple shocks such as Covid and other pandemics. We don’t need people who can regurgitate facts, so much as we need future generations equipped with the personal leadership to bring about transformation in our world. We need education that equips our children to be global explorers and adventurers, taking leadership to solve some of our most intractable problems.

Teaching and learning are quite different things.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught — Oscar Wilde

That is not to say there is no role for schools, but, rather, that schools should be ‘teaching’ in a way that follows the natural and innate curiosity of children and their own enormous capacity for learning in the most natural of ways. To me, the right kind of education is one that facilitates learning, not in a top-down, didactic kind of way, but in a way that empowers the knowledge the student already has, seeing them rich and full of potential, not as empty vessels that need to be ‘instructed’.

It is this philosophy that is at the heart of Ecoles Pour L’Avenir and the schools that we are starting in the Paris region as part of our network. The vision that school should be a way to UNFOLD potential, rather than stifle it through a student-centered approach that privileges active learning and alternative pedagogies that don’t have students sitting at desks facing blackboards but rather, engaging with the world, questioning and taking charge of their own learning, supporting children to be the leaders of the future.