WCED hosts first Future Focused Education Conference | Western Cape Education Department
WCED hosts first Future Focused Education Conference

WCED hosts first Future Focused Education Conference

A wide and diverse range of voices in education and development gathered at the Cape Town International Convention Centre to discuss educational challenges with a focus on a rapidly changing technological and living environment.

The two day conference on 25 and 26 March 2019 was an opportunity for the Western Cape education community, as well as education stakeholders across the country to network with leaders, strategic thinkers and entrepreneurs from Africa and across the globe.

The conference aimed to address challenges like how to incorporate technology in the classroom; social justice; inequalities in school performance; school safety, gangsterism and youth disaffection/unemployment; literacy and numeracy levels and teacher professional development.

In the opening address, Western Cape Education Minister Debbie Schäfer said as a department a great deal of attention must be directed at ensuring that the education system serves the dual purpose of ensuring that the basics are in place, and yet also anticipating and teaching the skills that will be needed when children leave school.

“Future Focused Education is designed to ensure that we constantly focus on what is changing in the world and in education, and constantly apply our minds to how we can ensure that we are adequately preparing our learners to be productive citizens in a fast-changing, globalised world.”

The conference highlights included presentations by the co-founder of HeyMath, Nirmala Sankaran, from India and the 2018 Global Teacher of the Year Award Winner Andria Zafirakou from the UK.

Microsoft’s Pepper, a humanoid robot, was also in action at the conference.