Really putting the global into global education
Back in 2018, I wrote a book on global competence because I had become increasingly convinced through my work with schools and school leaders that education had to do more than help young people succeed within the confines of the world immediately around them. Important though academic success undoubtedly is, and transformative though it can be, it is not enough on its own if the effect of education is merely to help young people remain where they are, thinking as they have always thought, and seeing only the opportunities which happen already to lie within reach – even if these opportunities, in international, fee-paying schools, seem relatively extensive, compared to the opportunities available to many young people in the world. Access to opportunity is one thing; making the most of that opportunity in order to further one’s own life chances, as well as the life chances of others, is quite another. In my book, I argued for something broader and, to my mind, more hopeful: that education should help young people develop the confidence, awareness and adaptability to move beyond the familiar, to engage intelligently and respectfully with people and places unlike their own, and to imagine lives which are not bounded solely by the circumstances into which they – or others – were born.
This matters profoundly because global mobility, as I see it, is deeply connected with social mobility. When young people can move with confidence across contexts — intellectually, culturally, linguistically and, where possible, physically too — the range of opportunities open to them increases. Their horizons widen; their choices expand; and with that expansion comes not only practical advantage, but often something more fundamental to human flourishing. Human beings, in my experience, are generally happier when they are stretched, when they glimpse possibility, and when they can sense that life may hold more than the narrow script they had previously assumed to be theirs. Education should, surely, be one of the great engines of such expansion.
Yet I have never seen this simply in instrumental terms, as though the purpose of developing global competence were only to help individuals advance themselves. The larger horizon has always mattered too. If young people grow up able to understand difference without fearing it, able to cross boundaries without losing themselves, and able to recognise their place in a world which is at once interdependent and fragile, then we improve, at least in some measure, our collective prospects for living together well. Harmony, and ultimately peace, may sound lofty aspirations in a fractured age; yet I have never been persuaded that education should apologise for aspiring to what is noble. Peaceful coexistence remains in all our interests, and it would be odd, surely, if schools did not concern themselves with helping to build the dispositions on which it depends.
If anything, the years since then have only strengthened this conviction, even as they have made the context more sobering. The pandemic exposed fault lines within and between societies; conflict has continued, and in some places intensified; public discourse has become more brittle, more polarised, and often less patient with nuance. The world has not become less interconnected — quite the reverse — but it has in many ways become less comfortable with its own interconnectedness. That does not make the development of global competence less urgent; it makes it more so. It does, however, require us to be a little more honest about where schools currently stand.
What I found – and still find – particularly interesting in my observations is that for most schools, the language of the global comes very easily, and the more ‘premium’ the school, the more easily it flows … and yet, if I were to be provocative, this fluent use of language can hide a set of complacent assumptions. Schools speak readily of preparing young people for an interconnected world; they point, often quite rightly, to cultural events, international partnerships, service activity, exchanges, visiting speakers, curriculum content and opportunities for students to encounter ideas and communities beyond their own. Much of this is valuable, and some of it is genuinely excellent … and yet there remains, I think, an uncomfortable distinction between offering occasional opportunities with a global dimension and designing an education which develops global competence in any coherent and cumulative way.
These two things are not the same, however much schools may sometimes wish them to be. For when one moves away from the school’s broad claims and instead examines the experience of an individual child over time, the picture often becomes rather less reassuring. The child may well encounter some memorable moments; they may have a teacher who is particularly internationally minded, a year group project which opens up new perspectives, or a trip which leaves a lasting mark. Equally, however, much of this may be contingent. Another child, in the same school, may experience something thinner, more sporadic and less developmental. There may be pockets of richness, but little progression; strong intentions, but limited coherence; considerable activity, but less structure than schools themselves imagine.
It is understandable that schools can feel a little bruised when the suggestion is made that they might not yet be doing enough. After all, they are busy places, under pressure from multiple directions, and many educators are already working hard to open young people’s eyes to the wider world. Yet if global competence really matters for the future of humanity – and I honestly cannot see any way in which it does not – then it cannot remain merely an ‘ethos’ or ‘idea’, however beautifully woven into the school’s branding. It has to become something which is built with deliberation and real purpose.
I have often found myself wondering what would happen if schools treated global competence in the same way that they treat mathematics – not in the sense of reducing it to a simplistic set of measurable fragments, of course, but in the sense of taking responsibility for its development across time. There would be thought about progression; there would be clarity about what children should encounter, understand and practise at different ages; there would be reflection on what experiences genuinely deepen a young person’s capacity to move through a complex world with intelligence and integrity. Schools would ask not simply whether students had been exposed to something ‘global’, but what that exposure contributed to, how it connected with prior learning, and what it prepared them for next. Moreover – and this is the real missing link – they would be able to demonstrate that each and every child was genuinely benefiting from this progression and wealth of opportunity. As I explain in my book, schools actually need to audit the child’s experience, because this is what really matters – far more than the list of opportunities on the website.
This is precisely why school groups have such an opportunity here, and a particular chance to distinguish themselves, not through rhetoric but through substance. A school group, if it chooses, can leverage its network in ways that a single school often cannot. It can learn across contexts, connect schools and students across borders, draw intelligently on cultural diversity within its own community, and create a more thoughtful sense of progression in what it means to educate a child globally. It can move beyond the broad statement that it is an international or global organisation and begin instead to ask a more exacting question: what, in practice, does the journey look like for each child, and how can we ensure that this is distinctive and determinedly available to each and every student in practice, not just in the marketing gloss. (And as any smart business person will tell you, distinctiveness leads to sales … done really properly, such a drive will not only make a difference to the lives of young people and the world, but it will also provide a positive competitive advantage, especially for the early adopters.)
It may even be that the first school groups to undertake this kind of audit properly will help shift the wider conversation. For if a group were to map the child’s journey honestly, from the earliest years to school exit, and to identify not only where the strongest global experiences lie but also where progression falters or expectations remain vague, then it would be doing something rather important. It would be moving the conversation away from branding and towards design; away from assumption and towards evidence; away from the comfortable claim that global competence is somehow ‘in the DNA’, and towards the more disciplined understanding that anything worth developing in young people needs thought, intentionality and follow-through.
This feels especially important at a time when the world our young people are entering is not becoming simpler, calmer or more generous by default. It is becoming more complex, more contested and more demanding of those who must make their way through it. Young people will need qualifications, certainly; but they will also need the capacity to read situations, cross boundaries, interpret difference, resist easy caricature, and recognise both possibility and responsibility in a world larger than themselves. They will need, in other words, the very capacities which sit at the heart of global competence; and if schools, especially globally connected school groups, are not prepared to cultivate these capacities deliberately, then one wonders who will.
So – a call to action. Dare I ask who will take on the challenge?
Source:
Dr Helen Wright MA (Oxon), MA, EdD, PGCE, MIoD, FRSA
Board Chair, International Education Advisor, Executive Leadership Coach