WILD for Education

The Challenges 

Learners and places of learning in the 21st Century are beset by challenges not faced and sometimes not understood by preceding generations. While the pressure for grade-based achievement is unrelenting, there is a growing body of evidence, now too large to ignore, that this race for grades excludes most learners and ultimately fails to benefit even the race ‘winners’. Recruiters are now routinely looking beyond traditional academic measures to evaluate prospective recruits. 

Places of learning are complex systems. They evolve, often over many decades, to be a synthesis of history, custom, practice and the expectations of client stakeholders. In such contexts, initiatives can founder in the face of passive conservatism or simply become diluted and sidelined by the busyness of the day to day. The pressures are ramped up, in differing global contexts, by league tables, aggressive standards-based inspection regimes or competition from growing privatisation.   

Initiative overload is a universally voiced complaint; innovations are often succeeded by new initiatives before proper time is allowed to evaluate and reap the benefit of investment. Linear directive interventions rarely take root in complex systems – but leaders fall into a loop of ‘what next?’ change which often leaves the day–to-day learner experience untouched. 

There is a crisis of social and personal disorders amongst young people, exacerbated by the pandemic but arguably triggered by the inception of smart phones which have ‘rewired’ childhood, reducing opportunities to build resilience through risk-taking play, peer interaction and synchronous communication. Many young learners have become fragile and vulnerable.   

Increasingly, both employers and Higher Education are looking beyond academic attainment to recruit school leavers who have the personal values, skills and dispositions to thrive in dynamic, uncertain, future environments.   

The ability to demonstrate self-knowledge, be a self-starter and take initiative as a learner or an employee, is becoming the differentiator for recruitment.  Research shows that these future focused values, skills and dispositions are harder to find. Reports from employer organisations suggest a growing need for comprehensive onboarding programmes to match employer needs. The school and college-leaving population has become less prepared for its next steps.   

Schools have struggled to find the capacity to generate these holistic capabilities against success expectations focused on measuring attainment. Businesses and HE institutions find themselves with onboarding challenges that they are not adequately prepared to meet.