The Future Schools project brings together the leaders of newly formed schools. Like Secondary Futures these schools have been given the opportunity to work differently.

Often the freedom of a new site or new staff provides opportunities to be innovative and work differently with learners.

Secondary Futures collects stories from these schools and shares them with others so they can consider how they might apply in their own communities.

In establishing these groups, we are providing support to those who are at the forefront of change, and often under the spotlight.

The Inspiring Teachers 2025 project takes as its baseline the vital role teachers play as a catalyst for educational success.

Inspiring Teachers 2025 builds on existing ideas and research to identify ways in which the role, status and training of teachers can be developed to match the needs and expectations of tomorrow.

Secondary Futures’ role as a catalyst for discussion about education includes challenging the status quo and illuminating signposts into the future.

The Blue Skies project invited some leaders from different sectors to meet with the Guardians to share their knowledge of, and aspirations for, the future and consider what students might need in order to be successful.

At their first meeting in November 2005, they noted that while they had often held informal conversations with colleagues and friends about their vision for the future, Blue Skies was the first time they had been invited into the debate shaping education that identified and collected their aspirations in a systematised way.

Blue Skies members support the value of futures thinking in policy development – particularly the consideration of a future beyond the traditional three-year time frame of a strategic plan.

Blue Skies participants:

• recognised the urgency of refocusing the purpose of schooling around the values and priorities for New Zealand in the future

• encouraged wide exploration of opposing ‘schools of thought’ about future of education

• considered the changing profile, motivators and aspirations of today’s young people and noted how inadequately they thought today’s schooling met these challenges.

The group also endorsed the idea that students in the future will need to experience risk and failure as part of knowledge acquisition and the creative process, and that schools should provide an environment that encourages and supports this.

These voices have now been added to our national database, their ideas shared in workshops and developed into resources for Phase 2 ‘rigorous imagining’ work.

The Blue Skies project will continue with a revolving membership at changing venues around New Zealand.

Secondary Futures has supported Touchstone Group member, the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (GIAB) with its "Creating Successful School Leavers" project. The project examined the future needs of secondary schools and secondary school learners from a business perspective. Following three workshops around the country in 2004 with employers, employees and young entrepreneurs, the "Creating Successful School Leavers" report defined the attributes young people will need to thrive in the "smart" enterprises of the future.

Read the key findings from the "Creating Successful School Leavers" project:

Successful School Leavers.doc

A handbook entitled "A Brief Guide to the Future" was produced by GIAB and the Secondary Futures secretariat as background reading for workshop participants in the "Creating Successful School Leavers" project. Read the guide:

A Brief Guide to the Future.doc

Secondary Futures is an active participant of the State Services Commission's Future Practitioners Forum, where we share our methodology, tools and ways of working with other futures projects. As part of this we have shared our scenarios and trends tools with the "Sustainable Business" futures project run by Landcare Research, and also with a variety of education audiences.