Trends Shaping Education 2025

This report explores global megatrends that are shaping societies in OECD countries and beyond through an educational lens. It raises questions about the implications of global trends for various stages and sectors of education and offers thinking tools to help education systems anticipate disruptions and think strategically about the future. In times of rapid change and uncertainty, futures thinking can help education systems navigate complex global challenges. By imagining potential scenarios and exploring diverse possibilities, it enables education policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions that are resilient and adaptive. This proactive approach can help education systems to prepare for potential disruptions, but also to seize emerging opportunities and take action today to shape the future. This summary highlights key trends explored in this edition along with suggestive questions they may raise for education.

The 2025 edition of this report reflects how the early 2020s have been marked by mounting geopolitical tensions and escalating ecological crises, with far-reaching implications for migration, energy security, trade dynamics, labour markets and policy priorities. Global conflicts and crises adversely affect human and planetary health, exacerbate existing inequalities and generate new disparities.

Social and economic inequalities, in turn, risk aggravating political polarisation, as gaps in life experiences and economic standing intensify divergent interests and priorities. Polarisation was chosen as Word of the Year for 2024 by the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster, based on significant increases in lookups and its relevance to current events. This highlights how opposing extremes in opinions and beliefs have become a defining feature of our societies, influencing everything from political discourse to social interactions.

The trends reviewed in this report paint a diverse and contrasting picture of social progress, where life outcomes are closely linked to the intersection of personal and group characteristics such as age, gender, migration background and socio-economic status. When people experience economic threats or fear for their safety, their social and moral circles may retract, leading them to prioritise their own kin or in-group. The fragmentation of the media landscape and the rise of social media can exacerbate this by reinforcing echo chambers and reducing exposure to diverse perspectives. Conversely, our levels of openness and empathy are more likely to grow when we feel secure.

Geopolitical tensions and global crises underscore the role of education in fostering resilience among learners and providing them with a sense of security. This includes those who have been directly affected, as well as children growing up in an increasingly conflict-ridden, unstable world. While education may not solve the root causes of global conflict, climate change and inequality, can it empower learners to understand, shape and demand the changes they want to see? And what role can it play, alongside other areas of public policy, in fostering social cohesion and respect for diversity? In a world where many expect today’s children to grow up to be worse off than their parents, how can education contribute to inter-generational understanding and solidarity?

Amidst these tensions, progress made through international co-operation and global advocacy indicates that collective action can offer hope. The recent past has shown that global challenges like pandemics, climate change, disruptions in energy supply, or cyberattacks can best be addressed through international efforts. Pooling scientific expertise and financial resources can enable societies to respond more swiftly and effectively to global crises. Similarly, international co-operation and agreements can help consolidate social progress on human rights, equality, and non-discrimination by setting global norms and standards.

Within countries, trust in democratic institutions and participation in elections are declining, but people who feel they have a say in government decisions report much higher levels of trust. This highlights the importance of citizen participation, with various forms of participative governance holding the promise to for citizens to influence public decisions in meaningful ways. But citizen voice is expressed in increasingly diverse forms, challenging traditional democratic processes to adapt. Movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and Fridays for Future, as well as the spread of decolonial perspectives, have fuelled debates about whose stories are being told and heard within democracies and in a globalised cultural landscape. While the explosion of digital technologies and social media has created new challenges by enabling the spread of false and misleading claims, it has also opened democratic debate to more voices.

More broadly, technological advancements and innovations are transforming all aspects of our lives and help imagine new approaches to global issues like climate change, food security and public health. Frontier technologies including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality are already changing how we work, learn and communicate. While concerns about job displacements, data privacy, equity, and mental health abound, the promise of these technologies to drive prosperity and transform fields as diverse as agriculture, transportation, medicine, and culture are fuelling investment and innovation.

For education, rapid labour-market transitions have raised questions about how to best anticipate future skill needs and diversify educational pathways to meet the rising demand for high-skilled workers and lifelong learning. Given the rapid pace of change, how to best combine the teaching of specific skills with that of broader competencies needed to continue learning throughout life, including metacognitive skills? How can education systems address both foundational and more complex sets of skills in a way that complements rather than compromises one for the other? And how can the education sector use technologies to optimise its own core processes?

Thinking further ahead, how radically will technological developments and sustainability imperatives impact the need for human labour and the way that humans interact with each other? Shifting priorities indicate that, for increasing numbers of young people, work no longer constitutes a core component of their identity. AI is expanding the capacity of robots to work with humans in different fields, meaning that more of us will work collaboratively with intelligent machines in the years to come. And while human relationships remain central to caring for others, new technologies have the potential to transform social interactions. With less time spent in direct human contact, can education help maintain a sense of community and foster socio-emotional learning and well-being?

These and other questions for education are explored throughout this report, encouraging readers to engage actively with its content, explore alternative futures with an open mind, and adapt questions, scenarios and thinking tools to support constructive stakeholder debates and forward-looking education policies.