Preparing Students For The Changing World With Life Competencies

The rapid pace of change in today’s world has a significant impact on all aspects of society, from the type of work we do and how we do it, to how we engage and communicate with others and how we navigate the integration of rapidly advancing technology into our everyday lives. Adults find these changes challenging enough, but they are also able to adapt as they encounter them in their working lives. In contrast, children and young people, who face a very different world compared to the one their parents grew up in, need to be equipped with Life Competencies – the right skills and knowledge to succeed well into their adult lives.

The OECD defines Life Competencies as a combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that individuals need to thrive in a complex and changing world. These include cognitive skills like critical thinking and creativity, social-emotional skills like collaboration and resilience, and practical abilities involving the use of tools and technology. Life Competencies also encompass ethical attitudes, adaptability and the capacity for self-reflection, enabling individuals to navigate personal and societal challenges effectively.

The OECD’s framework emphasises lifelong learning and adaptability to equip people to contribute meaningfully to society and lead fulfilling lives in an uncertain future. This is why Life Competencies are becoming an area of increasing interest within education, compounded by predictions on the future of work that will profoundly impact the next generation when they leave full-time education.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, in the next five years, 85 million jobs will be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines. At the same time, nearly 100 million new roles could emerge, creating a significant skills gap and higher demand for core competencies related to the green economy, systems analysis, business intelligence, data and AI and engineering, together with a continuing need for people, culture and care skills.^[1] In a few years, over one-third of skills considered important in today’s workforce will have changed. Some jobs will disappear, others will expand, and new roles will emerge.

Despite fears that automation will replace people, research suggests the reverse is true, with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) driving productivity and growth and increasing demand for higher-level technological, cognitive and social-emotional skills^[2], such as Life Competencies. As a result, a commitment to the teaching and development of Life Competencies is a non-negotiable in 21st-century education. Schools, students, parents, universities and employers all must prioritise the development of life skills as part of a well-rounded contemporary international education.

Identifying Life Competencies

The concept of Life Competencies can be very broad, encapsulating many areas and potential skills, which makes it difficult to prioritise every one of them. It is therefore important that schools identify the specific competencies that will be most beneficial to their students, taking into account the school’s ecosystem and capabilities for delivery. Research on the subject can help in informing what competencies are needed for the future. For example, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report ranks analytical thinking, creativity, resilience, self-awareness and lifelong learning as the five most important competencies for today’s workforce and future employability.

International Schools Partnership (ISP), a global network of 84 schools across 23 countries, puts the teaching of Life Competencies at the heart of what it offers to its students. The goal is to develop a holistic approach to education that enables students to excel as lifelong learners, with a range of skills to realise their longer-term goals and aspirations.

Our approach to Life Competencies is rooted in research such as that from the World Economic Forum, PISA, and McKinsey. For example, research by McKinsey identified 56 foundational ‘DELTAs’ (Distinct ELements of TAlent) associated with employment, higher incomes and job satisfaction to futureproof the next generation for the world of work.^[3] By mapping and validating McKinsey’s DELTAs against global life skills frameworks and academic research^[4], we have identified five broad categories of competencies that will equip and empower our students to thrive now and into their futures. We call these the ISP ‘Big Five’.

The ISP ‘Big Five’

The ISP ‘Big Five’ include a range of skills, attributes and behaviours – holistic, inclusive and universally applicable – related to Cognitive, Self-Leadership, Interpersonal, Digital and Global categories.

• Cognitive: I can lead my own learning through creative problem-solving, confident communication and organising my time and resources.
• Self-leadership: I can manage my emotions and identify my areas for growth, using my motivation and resilience to set goals and take steps to achieve them.
• Global: I am curious about and respectful of different countries and cultures, and I engage with local and global issues to take action for the wellbeing of people and planet.
• Interpersonal: I can build positive relationships with others and work effectively as part of a team to achieve common goals.
• Digital: I can use digital tools and technologies safely and responsibly to create, collaborate and innovate.

In recent years, educational research has highlighted the significance of signature pedagogies – specific approaches to teaching that effectively foster the development of Life Competencies. However, these are not simply add-ons to existing curriculum content. Instead, they require a rethinking of pedagogical practices to integrate Life Competencies into everyday teaching. This approach ensures that competencies are not just taught in isolation but woven into the fabric of learning experiences.

This is the goal of the ISP ‘Big Five’. By providing a theoretical foundation for Life Competencies, it can create a shared language and structure for their discussion. However, the real challenge lies in bringing the competencies to life within the classroom. Teachers need concrete examples and hands-on experiences that show how they can be embedded in their specific teaching contexts.

Implementing Life Competencies

Some competencies, termed ‘foundational’ Life Competencies, are essential building blocks for others. For instance, successfully implementing project-based learning depends on students’ abilities in areas like collaboration, communication, self-leadership, and learning how to learn. These foundational skills enable the pedagogical innovations that support deeper and more meaningful learning experiences.

Giving students the language of Life Competencies is critical to their successful implementation. When students can articulate and assess their own competencies, they become active participants in their learning journey. This shifts the focus of assessment from simply measuring outcomes to a collaborative process where teachers and students work together to showcase and evaluate these skills.

Success also hinges on engaging stakeholders across the educational ecosystem. Teachers, students, families, the broader community and even employers need to recognise the value of these competencies and the innovations in teaching that foster them. This collaborative effort ensures that Life Competencies are seen not as optional, but as essential to preparing students for the challenges of the future.

An effective method for embedding these competencies into teaching is through inquiry-led innovation and improvement. By encouraging teachers to collaborate on structured inquiries into their practices, they can gain deeper insights into student learning and make tacit knowledge about teaching explicit. This kind of reflective practice drives continuous improvement and innovation in the classroom.

Ultimately, the development of Life Competencies should not be viewed as a bolt-on to existing educational practices. Instead, it requires a system-wide transformation that touches all aspects of education – teaching, learning, assessment, teacher training and professional development. This broad rethinking will ensure that Life Competencies are embedded at every level of education, enabling students to thrive in a complex and ever-changing world.

Challenges Ahead

The biggest challenge for schools is demonstrating progress against Life Competencies. Although attempts have been made to benchmark life skills, there are no ‘gold standard’ assessments based on empirical evidence. Attaching a grade or desired outcome to multi-dimensional constructs such as Life Competencies is not as straightforward, valid or reliable as maths and English.

UNICEF reviewed 300 approaches to assessing Life Competencies and found ‘issues with validity, bias and measurement invariance’ with all of them. Parents, teachers and principals agree it is important to gather evidence of life skills but lack confidence in the ability of standardised assessments to measure these effectively.  

The key takeaway from research on standardised assessment is to proceed with caution. A great deal of important learning cannot be easily or accurately measured or quantified, and attempts to do so can be costly, time-consuming and resource-heavy. Consequently, ISP has set up a project team to evaluate the best way to systematically create teaching frameworks and professional development resources to guide the development of student resources.

As complex and multi-dimensional constructs, the main challenge with Life Competencies includes a lack of consensus around progression over time and a scarcity of evidence-based approaches to learning, teaching and assessing them. Despite these challenges, schools can still foster the development and demonstration of Life Competencies in authentic, impactful and operationally viable ways with the right structures in place, signalling the need for a framework for best practice.

The ISP Big Five underpins ISP’s Learning Improvement Process (LIP) and we believe this explicit focus on defining and demonstrating progress against these competencies will assist others in forming rigorous strategies for developing the full range of critical life skills.  

The framework aims to set schools up for success by blending outcomes of field and academic research into one unique formula. Aligned with our Learning Improvement Process (LIP) and CASEL’s ‘Theory of Action’, the Roadmap outlines key areas for successful implementation.

These include establishing a vision with the community; mapping how the ISP Big Five will be learned, taught and assessed through curricular and co-curricular activities (including International Opportunities programmes (ILOS) and Future Pathways); using evidence to inform learning and teaching; and partnering with parents to develop competencies at home and in the wider community.

UNICEF correctly identified the challenges facing generations to come:

‘Children today live in a world of challenges and opportunities, including new technologies, changing labour markets, migration, conflict, and environmental and political changes. To succeed [they] need access to quality education that develops skills, knowledge, attitudes and values to become lifelong learners who can learn, unlearn and relearn; find and retain work; make wise decisions; and positively engage in their communities’

UNICEF (2019)

Our recently announced partnership with the Digital Education Futures Initiative (DEFI) and Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange (Camtree) of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, aims to find the best way to provide children with access to these skills by researching the teaching of Life Competencies in the classroom.

We aim to provide insights into the teaching, learning and assessment of Life Competencies to improve existing practice and create a research-informed, inquiry-driven educational ecosystem to support teachers in further developing the ISP Life Competencies Model. This is an important step in the evolution of this critical area of education that we hope will encourage others to pursue similar goals.

Chris Kelso is Group Head of Student Futures at ISP.

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1. Understanding the impact of AI on skills development, UNESCO, France, 2021
2. The Future of Jobs Report 2020 & 2023, World Economic Forum
3. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/defining-the-skills-citizens-will-need-in-the-future-world-of-work (2021)
4. Including McKinsey’s Skills for Work (2021), PISA Global Competencies (2018), OECD Transformative Competencies (2018), UNESCO Competencies for Sustainable Development (2018), UNICEF Citizenship Education (2019), Cambridge Life Competencies (2020), International Society for Technology in Education Standards (2021)