the primary head's blog

Expert: Look into my crystal balls.

Policy Maker: Brilliant, I love this. You literally have no idea how much this will help me out in tomorrow’s meeting.

Teacher: I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Expert: Let us look and see what the future holds.

Policy Maker: Let me see, let me see, let me see! Am I in a bigger office?

Expert: Let’s see. Ooh, the future is very different.

Teacher: Is it? Is it really? And how exactly?

Expert: Oh, the jobs of the future are very different to the ones of today.

Policy Maker: Oh no, really? Are there still policy makers?

Expert: I think so.

Policy Maker: Thank goodness. What else?

Teacher: Yes, what else?

Expert: Well, there are robots.

Teacher: Robots?

Expert: Yes. There are maybe robots.

Teacher: And what are these robots doing?

Expert: Well, it’s difficult to say, it’s the future. But there are definitely maybe robots.

Policy Maker: Are they making policies?

Expert: No.

Policy Maker: Oh thank goodness.

Expert: Who knows what they’re doing, but they’re doing something. Something that we used to do, so who knows what we will be doing instead.

Teacher: Well, you’re the one with the crystal balls. Can’t you be a little bit more specific?

Expert: People are living longer.

Teacher: Obviously.

Expert: But who knows how many of them will have jobs? Maybe the robots will do most of the jobs that we currently know about? Maybe only 50% of the human population will be able to earn enough money to live on?

Policy Maker: To be fair, the chancellor is doing a pretty good job of covering that himself without the needs of robots. They’re not foreign robots are they?

Teacher: So what skills, aside from robot maintenance, do you see being utilized within the workforce?

Expert: Skills that we could not possibly understand.

Teacher: Well this was fun, I’m off now to have a conversation with people who aren’t idiots.

Expert: But skills that we must prepare our children for?

Policy Maker: Good point.

Teacher: Hang on.

Expert: There is a real need for joined up thinking.

Policy Maker: Joined. Up. Thinking…

Teacher: Whoa there! Let’s begin with some actual thinking first; we can move on to joined up thinking when we’re good and ready.

Expert: Schools are acting too slowly. They are behind the curve.

Teacher: What curve?

Expert: The curve of the future. Schools are not teaching the skills of the future.

Policy Maker: I knew it.

Teacher: I’m sorry. What skills for what jobs?

Policy Maker: The jobs that the robots aren’t doing?

Teacher: Which are?

Expert: People will live to be over a hundred in the future. They may need to find work in forty different types of jobs spanning ten different careers before they retire to die.

Policy Maker: Schools should be equipping our children with these skills.

Teacher: What bloody skills?

Policy Maker: A portfolio of skills.

Teacher: That doesn’t mean anything.

Expert: We should be asking the children.

Policy Maker: Brilliant. Yes. Schools should be asking the children about what skills they think they’ll need in the future. We’ll call it the ‘future skills portfolio’.

Teacher: Stop saying portfolio.

Expert: You must get this right.

Policy Maker: Yes. Schools must get this right. Or else the future will be their fault.

Teacher: And if the future is fine?

Policy Maker: Then I have done my job.

Expert: And as long as there’s a future, I’ll always be an expert.

(If you think I’m joking)