NESTA's idiscover education programme will help today's young people develop the skills and talents needed to face the uncertain and challenging world of tomorrow.
The programme (covering two academic years) explores how to put power in the hands of young people so that they can choose and experience new opportunities for learning the wider skills they need for the future. It involves a range of interventions including: building an appetite for future skills among parents and young people; developing exciting new learning experiences that promote those skills; and an online voucher scheme enabling young people to purchase the experiences.
It starts from the premise that our education system is not geared to meet the demands of the future and is failing to provide young people with the broad range of skills they will need. Engagement in education by business, the community and families is on the whole sporadic and young people are not gaining the necessary exposure to emerging areas of the economy, such as the digital and creative industries and high-tech disciplines such as biotechnology.
The voucher scheme will enable young people to access exciting and inspirational learning experiences, for example working in teams to help solve real business dilemmas or social challenges, to designing new products. Some of these experiences will be offered in intensive weekend workshops, others will be term-long projects undertaken in a team. They will enable the participants to acquire some of the skills essential for innovation, such as creativity, self-belief, energy, leadership and an informed attitude to risk-taking.
NESTA will be implementing the scheme for students from Key Stage 3 in two school clusters - one in South London, and the other in Manchester.