EDITORIAL, JUNE 2026

THE REAL WORLD

As Cinde Lock argues in this month’s edition of ITM, there has never been a more urgent need for schools and educators to think about ‘the real world’ when designing a curriculum. But the question then arises: what exactly is the ‘real world’? One thing that is certain – it is changing. In today’s ‘real world’ I find myself breathing a sigh of relief when I am finally connected to a fellow human being if I have a query about a flight booking or a telephone bill.

However, people adapt – it is what we are good at. Society moves on, but the dangers of being left behind are nicely illustrated this month by Kushal Kundanmal when he talks about adapting school admissions procedures to the expectations of millennial parents. And if that sounds Darwinian, it is.

Connected digital activity is growing exponentially and the way it works is increasingly automated. It is hard to disagree  with Richard Human that every school should appoint a trained AI lead-teacher to keep abreast of what is happening and to help schools make fully-informed decisions in every area of school activity, from curriculum to marketing, and student well-being.

There is also a growing awareness that skills studied in a purely academic cocoon are losing their value relative to student needs. If schools are to continue preparing young people for ‘what comes next’ in their lives, we all need to think differently. This is not to say that learning Language and Number, the Scientific Method and Historical Thinking are now irrelevant to student needs. If anything, quite the reverse. Where and how these skills will be used are, however, changing. And, with the growing automation of jobs traditionally undertaken by university graduates, schools have either to inculcate different habits of mind, or teach different skills to prepare their students for the future adequately.

Which brings us back to the ‘real world’. This month’s edition of ITM shows how two schools, one in Canada and one in Scotland are doing just that. Of course, they are by no means the only ones taking the initiative. This simple fact and a continuing belief in the skills and ideals of teachers give us good reason to be optimistic about what we are doing as a profession, rather than otherwise.