Trends Shaping Education 2025

Overview & Synopsis

Did you ever wonder how rising inequality and polarisation will shape education? Or how advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other technologies could transform teaching and learning? Trends Shaping Education is a triennial report exploring the social, technological, economic, environmental and political forces transforming education systems worldwide. The trends are robust, but the questions raised in this report are suggestive. They are designed to inspire reflection and inform strategic thinking on how global trends might transform education and how education can shape a better future. The 2025 edition explores a rich array of topics related to the key themes of global conflict and cooperation, work and progress, voices and storytelling, and bodies and minds. It builds on foresight exercises from previous editions, while introducing a range of new futures thinking tools to inspire reflection and action. This report is designed to give policy makers, researchers, educational leaders, administrators and teachers a robust, non-specialist source of international comparative trends shaping education, whether in early childhood education and care, schools, universities or in programmes for older adults. It will also be of interest to students, parents and anyone curious about how education can address today's challenges and prepare for the future.