Future Schools Network

Project briefing

The Future Schools Network is a group of 50 schools from across the country that have come together to meet the challenge of creating schools fit for the twenty-first century.  The Network is more than a forum for ideas: it aims to help schools develop educational models for a changing world.

What is the problem?

Standards in our schools have been rising over the past fifteen years. More pupils than ever are leaving school with five A-C grades at GCSE and the number of failing schools has dropped to its lowest point.

However, our economy and society are changing.  Education has to meet pupils' needs as they prepare for a future that technology, demography and environmental factors will make very different from today. To thrive in this world, pupils need not just knowledge, but a love of learning and the capability to learn throughout life.

Britain's school system is now progressing more slowly than in many of our economic competitors and the gap between Britain and the top performers, like Finland, is widening.  In the UK, nearly 40 per cent of school leavers do not reach basic levels of attainment.

If we are to address these problems, we must reassess what and how our children are taught.

Innovation is the key

Any teacher or leader in a school will point out that change is a fact of life. To meet the challenges of the future, we need change to be more profound and rapid than ever before.  We need continual innovation throughout the school system, and to find efficient methods of spreading the most effective ideas.

One size does not fit all. Our schools are diverse, and we must ensure that educational practice can be adapted to make sense in the local context. In the future, therefore, we need to concentrate more on giving professionals the right tools, and less on driving central initiatives.

Our response

The RSA created the Opening Minds competence-based curriculum to help meet pupils' real needs. Following the success of many schools using Opening Minds, we decided to broaden our focus and expand our aims and ambitions for whole-school transformative change.  This is what the Future Schools Network sets out to achieve.

We want to establish a network of schools to explore what a school for the 21st century should look like, what it should teach and how it should change.

This Future Schools Network will work with outstanding practitioners and other interested groups to take us beyond the current system into new territory.  We'll be looking at how schools teach their students and at the systems needed to efficiently develop and spread innovative practice.

The Future Schools Network is both about what pupils learn and how schools can be transformed.

What we aim to do

We want to help schools who choose the Opening Minds approach to produce a compelling, workable vision of a 21st-century school.

The Future Schools Network will: 

• develop models of practice in participating schools, including methods of professional collaboration
• create a network and resources to help a wider group of schools to explore, adapt and take up this practice
• engage with policy makers and other strategic bodies in education
• produce a report that looks at what we learn from the values and processes of the network.

Please get involved by email or on our blog, and join our Future Schools Network.

Find out more about what the Future Schools Network will do and about the Future Schools Network Values.

Our partners - the Innovation Unit

The Innovation Unit, formerly part of the Department for Education and Skills, is an independent, not-for-profit organisation.  It aims to stimulate, incubate and accelerate innovation to improve education and other public services. It acts as a catalyst for change that supports teachers and involves students in developing 'next practice': what schools should look like in the twenty-first century.

Visit the Innovation Unit website and read more about Next Practice.