Education for innovation
Published
April 2007
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Education for innovation 112 KB
Description
Innovative individuals derive confidence from their mastery of the basic skills that are the building blocks of all good education, and possess the deep subject knowledge that allows them to create new ideas.
They seize the initiative, challenge accepted norms and have the soft skills they need to develop and exploit these ideas. The UK should maintain its focus on developing both basic and advanced technical skills. However, simultaneously, it needs to boost the number of people who have the soft skills and attitudes essential to innovation.
These skills and attitudes are best developed in young people where both formal and informal influences play a significant role. A series of existing initiatives centred on creativity, enterprise and school leadership provide many of the building blocks necessary for delivering education for innovation.
Some schools have pieced these together to generate a climate that teaches skills while encouraging risk-taking, collaboration and innovation. However, across the UK, these do not yet add up to a coherent strategy.
In the short term, the role that existing school-focused programmes play in innovation, and how these link in with initiatives beyond the school gate, should be reviewed.
More should be done to facilitate learning between schools on how the best among them encourage and enable innovative behaviour. In the longer-term, soft skills for innovation need to be embedded across the curriculum and into the culture of schools.