While schools talk of preparing young people for the future, they inevitably have their feet in the past. Curricula have only begrudgingly realized that they can be broader, multi-disciplinary, different from the ones teachers studied in their own pasts; pedagogies draw on instructional designs that too instinctively default to be didactic and teaching for recall rather than for deep understanding; and assessment systems find grades and marks – often with ‘one right answer’ and normally conducted using pencil and paper examinations in stuffy the simplest way of ranking students.

Drawing on experiences from the Creativity Collaboratives, the symposium will invite delegates to consider how schools can change their curricula, develop a repertoire of creative instructional approaches and radically rethink their approaches to assessment.