Stability in Teaching Skills
What is missing is a methodical approach to re-skilling and up-skilling across the full education sector. It is not a question of schools acting alone; everyone from associations to recruitment agencies should be involved in this approach, and there is equally a role for individual educators themselves, who must take a proactive approach to their own professional learning. One must also entertain whether governments can/should play a role in this regard, in terms of creating working environments whose structures promote and espouse this kind of attention to skills stability. We know that it is needed.
Of Ethics and Struggle
Do we have a system of moral principles that govern our business actions in the world that we call international schools? How are individuals in our sector behaving, when it comes to 'making deals' to open/create new schools around the world, as part of the wave that appears to be remarkable growth in international schools? In the quest for income, whether those funds are destined for endowment pots or to support bursaries and scholarships in a 'home campus' location, have we struggled sufficiently and openly with the ethics of it all? And what are the consequences of an insufficient struggle?
The Changing Face of Competition for Schools
You may not be aware of the next-generation challengers to the traditional international school model. A recent report from SSATB (now: The Enrollment Management Association) highlights a number of new models to ponder from the perspective of competition. These are not putative or theoretical models of how we might do school -- they exist and they're gaining ground. They are expanding. They have proof of concept.
Why Innovation Fails
Innovation is a buzz-word, admittedly. People think they're cool when they use it, when they criticise schools (and other organisations and industries) for not being innovative. The truth is, though, that innovation is deeply challenging. Although we frequently hear a choir of folks sing the praises of failure, it should be pointed out, as Ben Slater of consultancy Bow & Arrow (London) does in the most recent issue of London Business School Review (2.2015), that "[i]nnovation is a complete and utter basket case in business [...]. There is no other discipline [...] that has a higher failure rate than innovation [...]. It is incredibly hard. There are multiple pain points where innovation can fail [...]."
On Pervasive Myopia
Ever the optimist, I always read reports on 21st-century whatever (e.g., skills, competencies, curriculum, etc.) with the hope that there may be some glimmer of recognition of the life-force of teaching and learning, as opposed to policy-wonk interpretations of what ‘education’ means now. So it was that I immersed myself in a seventy-page PDF from the Asia Society and Rand Corporation (aka a Global Cities Education Network report) entitled Measuring 21st-Century Competencies: Guidance for Educators (November 2013).