Looking back we can see a number of significant shifts that have occurred in education over the last 100 years.

With the benefit of hindsight some may be described as truly seismic while others had more subtle but still influential effects on the education landscape, though we need to be wary of sentimental retro-education.

Using insight and foresight we can identify some of the shifts that we believe are needed in education to cope with trends already over-the-horizon.

One example: currently our compulsory education system "fails" a high proportion of learners due to the emphasis on academic pathways as opposed to technical education/training pathways. Many learners suffer from this mismatch, for example those who are generally more "tactile" in their preferred learning medium and prefer technology and using their hands as opposed to studying theory in books. These learners have a largely untapped potential for lifting New Zealand's current level of productivity through improved learning outcomes and appropriate qualifications. Maori, especially males, are over-represented in this group.

Despite the current vogue for futures thinking, the further out we look the more problems there are in predicting or planning, as the current economic crisis demonstrates. Perhaps the best we can do is to recognise the inevitability of turbulence and equip ourselves, our professional colleagues and our students to be flexible and responsive as the unknown unfolds.

In the natural environment the analogy is that we need to enhance biodiversity and encourage locally robust ecosystems because this will give the best chance of creative adaptation to new and unpredictable circumstances.

For education this means encouraging diverse approaches, fostering creativity and developing the skills of action learning and reflective learning. This puts the focus and onus on each individual learning community, in its own live and virtual knowledge ecology, to adapt in its own way to rapid technological, economic and social change.

A bi-focal approach is what is needed: creating at the local level a shared vision for the learning community which both takes account of the rapidly deteriorating economic climate, with resulting pressure on many parents at all levels and in particular on senior secondary school rolls and on the tertiary system, and looks beyond it to the opportunities which will come in the workplace and the wider community through innovation, people development, skills training and new ways of learning, working and earning.

Understanding the shifts required should be upstream of strategy. At a local and pragmatic level, the identification of the key shifts required can provide a flexible framework that enables education leaders, boards of governance, policy makers, funders, teacher associations, business groups and communities to align their strategic and operational planning and focus their energies.

So the question is, given future imperatives, what are the key shifts that are required in the New Zealand education system? How can these shifts best be brought about in each learning community to lift student achievement at all ages and stages?