AS national conventions about immigration, cyber security, under-employment, artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapid transformation of our workplace are debated, a daunting question that looms is how we are going to prepare the next generation to tackle these critical challenges and make use of some incredible opportunities.
Ensuring that students excel academically alone may not do the trick.
The other important aspect is making sure they are prepared and ready to be the leaders of tomorrow in order to be able to address the problems of the future.
Successful leaders are knowledgeable, self-aware, ef fective communicators, problem-solvers, collaborative and able to persevere in the f ace of obstacles. For the last several years, these skills have been taken on greater agency in national systems, and the spectrum is called socialand emotional learning (SEL). The debate is no more about whether they should be taught, but about where and how.
At the same time, national systems are identifying strategies to accelerate their effects to embed SEL skills across programmes to improve student success.
