Boys from Magdalen College School showing off their creativity in a production of the musical Grease

Steffan Griffiths, deputy head at Oxford's Magdalen College School, asks what will define success for school-leavers in 2020?' For most people in their final year, I imagine favoured answers will include: "Good academic results which allow me to pursue my ambitions in higher education and the job market"; "Happy memories and enjoyment from my extra-curricular activities"; "Good friends to stay in touch with".

But let me set you a different question: what will define success for the school-leavers of 2020, those currently starting out on mainstream education?

Goodness knows what assessment systems will be in place by then, what subjects will be in vogue, even what sort of world will exist then.

However, we do need to be thinking about the type of world our current students will be moving into (and shaping) and whether our current educational structures are providing skills to prepare them adequately.

Let me put forward a few guesses for 2020. First, I don't think it will be a case of school's out'; it will be as important then as it is now to use one's formative years to develop intellectual potential and to demonstrate that one has a trainable mind. Thus, whatever the assessment system, the key ingredients of a formal education will still be important: to enjoy and be good at gathering and retaining knowledge of the world around us; to explore the human condition through texts and images; and to develop skills in written and oral expression.

There may well be changes afoot in the syllabuses and even in the subjects offered, but job-applicants will still need to be numerate, literate, problem-solvers who can work well with others.

In fact, I think interpersonal skills are going to grow in importance. Because of new technologies and a more unstable political climate, the world will change ever more rapidly.

Fluidity within the working life is a reality now, but I anticipate it becoming more marked. That not only means that the next generation will need to be able to retrain fast to pick up new technical skills, but 2020 leavers will also need to get on with others, to consider the effect of their behaviour on those around them as a matter of routine and to adapt to changing situations.

It will be less realistic to ignore global issues "because they don't affect me", while those in the developed world will increasingly find it in their own interests to view matters affecting the developing world sympathetically for reasons of sustainable development and political stability.

So how will their schooldays prepare the 2020 leavers for such a world? Individual skills already receive plenty of coverage in the formal curriculum and I do not imagine this will change radically.

Whatever we are teaching them, pupils will still need to present arguments persuasively on paper and in discussion, as well as to be able to train themselves to pick up, say, a new software package or a new language.

Having said this, I do not anticipate there being any change to English as the global lingua franca; I have not done much research but my guess is that the rush for the learning of Mandarin here is dwarfed by the enthusiasm of the Chinese to learn English.

I am suspicious of the formal teaching of team-building skills. The best way to pick up collaborative skills is to practise them on the ground. It does not matter whether it be via sports teams, orchestras and ensembles, play casts or debating teams; it is not the content but the process which is relevant.

All involved will learn by joining together with others to achieve a shared goal, appreciating each other's strengths and weaknesses, and sharing in success and failure.

We must make sure that it is the normal experience of our schoolchildren to develop such skills outside the formal curriculum.

One of the weaknesses of the education system's current reliance on tables and measurement is that schools, both staff and pupils, inevitably start to think in terms of measurable criteria. However, this monolith is already beginning to break up as assessment systems proliferate with the international baccalaureate and the 14-19 diploma moving alongside GCSEs and A-Levels, and one can anticipate further moves in this direction in the future. There is, therefore, an opportunity for the sparks of creativity and pupil-led initiative to be consciously reintroduced in order to prepare our 2020 leavers with tools to forge their way in a rapidly changing 21st century.

It is a given now that serious job-applicants will be well-qualified and competent and that it is the interpersonal skills discussed above and the extra spark which will land the job: this initiative might include independent plays, investment clubs, Young Enterprise schemes, ball committees, pupil-led exchanges between schools in Oxford and further afield, or a well-organised gap year. In 2020 such skills will be even more important.

I predict that job markets will move even more quickly as mass migration grows and the workforces of the emerging economies in India and China begin to dominate.

People in the currently developed world will have to show initiative and creativity to hold a place in the new world order.

The definitions of success discussed at the top of this article were good academic performance, healthy extra-curricular involvement and social compatibility.

In 2020, I think the first will be the minimum expectation and it will be the other two criteria which provide the greater opportunities for success. In the developed world, we have moved through the agricultural, industrial and service economies.

We are now entering the creative economy - and our school system must react fast.

11:43am Monday 14th January 2008

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