From an administrative point of view, the Global Education system is divided into two types – centralised and localised. On top of that there are also two dominant approaches to teaching and learning – post-Confucian in which learning is dispensed to the student by the teacher, and post-Socratic in which the student learns more through inquiry and exploration with a teacher’s guidance. All modern education systems are a mix of the two, but it’s important to understand which is more dominant in any market as this will play a role in the development of education and education technology over the next few years. Finally, there is a significant difference between developed and developing economies and societies which determines the strategic requirements of each country’s education system.
Education moves extremely slowly. Because we are more or less on the cutting edge of both teaching/learning and technology we tend to be exposed to schools, teachers and experts who are highly innovative. The vast majority of teaching and learning worldwide hasn’t changed much over the last five years and is unlikely to significantly change during the next five. There are, however, a number of significant goals, pressures and needs within the education system that are becoming more pressing and for which technology would provide very useful support.
Centralised and developing education systems
In centralised education systems (especially in developing countries) the dominant requirements are:
1. An improvement in the quality of teaching and learning
2. Standardised assessment and outcomes to international standards
3. An increasingly urgent demand for technical and vocational skills
4. Quality content mapped to the national curriculum
5. An increasingly urgent need for teachers to be trained and supported in the classroom
From a classroom technology point of view this means that over the coming years assessment and content mapped to the national curriculum will continue to be paramount. In centralised education systems this puts the emphasis on standardised networking across schools with libraries of curated content – essentially the model we have implemented in Moscow. As far as resources are concerned, the big demand is not only for content, but comprehensive guidance on teaching the content – so that each learning resource comes with instructions and examples of ‘how to teach’. This is especially important in developing countries where the teachers’ knowledge and skills are low.