Interview: Dr. Shawn Lee Dilly, Director General, Emirates National Schools

Dr. Shawn we are honoured to interview you as part of Everose Strategies’ launch series. Obviously strategy in everything we do in life is extremely important. Let’s talk about strategy in education. How does an organisation responsible for readying the workforce of the future adapt its curriculum to match the demands of the economy?

You use the appropriate term: strategy. Part of this strategy has to be looking at the markers that show success, and understanding what the indicators of students finding success are. One of the challenges I see with education currently is that we are using test scores and college preparedness, and those are incomplete indicators of student preparedness for the workplace. I think that part of the strategy should be to build a better relationship with business and industry to ensure that we are matching school output with the demands of the knowledge economy. So it will be important as schools continue to evolve that they include business and industry experts in their advisory committees and boards, to help develop a strategy that ensures that students are leaving with the appropriate skills.

All of the evidence within research, business and industry shows a widening gap between what a student leaves school with and what businesses, industry and the current economy need. I’m very concerned that we are not seeing schools evolve fast enough to keep up with the disruptive change that is happening, and I think the pace of that change may even be about to increase. The strategy has to be one of continuous improvement that keeps us appraised of all of these new challenges and changes. A recent statistic from the World Economic Forum indicated that 65% of students entering primary school would end up working in a role that does not currently exist. So part of the strategy is looking into all available information. What are organisations like the OECD, the World Economic Forum, McKinsey & Company and other predictors of economic cycles telling us? What are the future demands? We have to be responsive to these predictions and evolve the instructional target to ensure the strategies meet the coming demand.

Can you elaborate on the concept of future-ready competencies (FRCs), which you have been working on for a while? What do FRCs mean to you and to Emirates National Schools (ENS)?

In my book I used the term FRCs. At ENS we are calling them future-leadership competencies because part of our vision is preparing future leaders. But basically what FRCs means is looking at what skills and knowledge are necessary across all occupations. There will always be occupation-specific things that we can’t necessarily address, but are there skills and knowledge that transcend all of the different occupations and prepare students with the greatest amount of success? Because we know things will change, and that we will have to reskill multiple times.

At the heart of FRCs is a culmination of all the research and economic development work I have done over the past decade. There are 12 categories of skills that are most desirable, or the most likely to help students be successful, at least up to 2030. We now have to transform our classrooms to ensure we are instilling these competencies there. The real challenge is in creating those targets for students. We have to elevate these concepts. Human skills — the traditional soft skills such as interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence and social intelligence — are traditionally not taught in schools, but they are being coveted as the most important skill set, partly because they are not expected to be replaced by a machine anytime soon. These are the skills that are often attributed to the most successful leaders and individuals out there. We have to shift the focus of our curricula to produce students with those skill sets.

And when students have this emotional intelligence, adaptability and resilience, they are very agile in tackling changes in the workplace using reasoning, problem solving and interpersonal skills, right?

Correct. We know that with globalisation, urbanisation, as people increasingly move to cities, that they will have to work with a more diverse group of people, and have an understanding of different cultural backgrounds, so the dynamics will make it important to have those skills. Because the goal is to achieve a certain product or outcome in the work they do together, and the best way to do that is to have a highly functioning and effective team. Communication is at the heart of that, and having a solid understanding of these human skills is the most efficient way of achieving your goals.

Presumably the students that you encountered 15 years ago are not the same as today’s. How would you characterise the change in student behaviour, and in their demands from educators? What literature is there that addresses this?

There are some aspects of student behaviour that we are not doing a good job of adapting to. Schools are trying to do things in the same way that we did 15, 30, 50 years ago, and students’ brains are physically different today. Recent research shows that the visual cortex in young people’s brains is larger than it was in the past, which is believed to be caused by having increased visual inputs. This is largely due to technology, devices and interactive toys. We have heard all about shortened attention spans creating disruptions and new challenges for education.

Even if students are sitting quietly and listening to the teacher, they are not necessarily engaged. We have to evolve our approach to the instructional environment in a way that engages students much more deeply with the content. Modern schools will have to consider the value of purpose. I think we’ve disconnected people from their passions, and they’re choosing careers not necessarily because it’s what they want to do but for monetary compensation. If you work with a group of students that is passionate about a topic, you have no issues with discipline or with work being done to a very high quality, because they will ask for help, ask questions, dig, and do the things they need to do. So we have to restructure our environment to make it much more student-centred. We’re seeing some transition in that direction but it is not a pervasive model. This generation is faced with different challenges to any other in history, and they are going to have to use their passion about a specific topic towards the purpose of solving these problems. And there are a lot of ways to monetise purpose and create value from it. So I think we need to teach the value of purpose to students.

How can you tap into the passion of the kids? Is it there organically, or can it be ignited?

I think it’s a bit of both. We need to use the various tests for finding out what kids like to do or are good at. In the US they used to pigeonhole kids based on those assessments. I’m not talking about pigeonholing a student into a specific pathway. I’m saying, here’s what you’re good at and showing interest in. Let’s look at where we can use that to give you some purpose in terms of your career path. Because we know that career path will modify multiple times throughout a student’s journey because of technological change, globalisation, and all the different disruptive influences. So we have to teach students to be resilient, and to understand all of the dynamics of upskilling and reskilling.

Lifelong learning is not a choice anymore, it’s a necessity. So we have to also teach kids to be passionate about learning, and wanting to be lifetime learners. People are most likely to learn if they enjoy what they do. A few years ago I read Tony Wagner’s book Creating Innovators, which talked about the importance of play. We stick our noses up in education about the concept of play, but there is all kinds of positive research about its importance, especially in early childhood. To me, it’s also about extending that to work. If there’s a task we have to do that we like, we’ll spend a lot more time and energy and do it to a much higher standard.

We have to help kids find what those things are so that they can find a career path that aligns with those enjoyable things. Passion plus purpose equals fulfillment. It’s a concept that I see a lot in self-help and other areas, but I don’t see it in education and schools as a discussion. To me there has to be a purpose behind what we do. I think this is really missing from schools, and it will be absolutely necessary as we go through this disruptive change that is already arriving. It will be exponentially more challenging for young people because of how fast things will be changing.

Your last sentence is a perfect bridge to the next question. How conscious are parents when it comes to the challenges of the changing times, and are you working with them?

That’s an important question and it’s something we need to do a better job with. The research surrounding career path selection shows that parents are one of the most influential factors. So we have to also educate parents about what is available, what is coming and what is happening. But here too it is imperative to have that partnership with business and industry, because it will allow us to have a credible discussion with them about what is coming. Part of what I want to do, and what I think schools have to do, is create direct pathways for students to those different partners. Because talent acquisition is one of businesses’ toughest challenges right now. They need to find people to fill gaps. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they go directly from high school into the job, there can be an internship along with their university experience, students can be cultivated from the early years to the later years. We are introducing these concepts with our technology and career centre programmes that are just getting off the ground at two of our campuses. That will be part of their core mission, helping us build these partnerships.

We are also starting a parent advisory group to work with them, but we have to educate parents too. For example, I don’t blame my parents for the advice that they gave me, but in retrospect it was a very uninformed opinion. It’s essential for schools to provide the missing pieces for parents so that they can work with these tools with their kids. Because everybody wants their kids to be successful, happy and fulfilled. If we can create an environment where the parent grows with the student as they go together through their years in education, then I think we’ve done a successful job. We can’t do it without their support, it has to be hand in hand with them.

The UAE and the wider region have been investing heavily in technical and vocational training. Where is ENS on that subject, and how do you see it progressing?

 It is improving, but even here in the region it still needs to improve. Traditional vocational, career and technical education is teaching a very specific set of skills that only provide finite opportunities, as there won’t be any careers that don’t evolve because of technology and other factors. Programmes have to prepare students for that continuing evolution. There are predictions of over 100 million displaced workers in the nine major economies by 2030. The same prediction includes the creation of 120 million new jobs, but you have to have the skills and knowledge to access those opportunities. Career-based education will be vital in this respect. Research shows that young people traditionally have less access to reskilling and upskilling opportunities. The UAE and other governments will have to make sure that students have a good mechanism for upskilling and reskilling.

What we’re trying to do with our technology and career centres is a little bit alternative. What Emirati students are looking for is not necessarily a specific certification in, say, carpentry, for example. So we’re trying to give them a better understanding of what carpentry entails, but then expose them to a wider role in construction and connected fields. It’s about exploring their interests and aptitudes to help guide them to a career path that they’ll be successful and happy in. It will continue to evolve as we get more parent advisory groups and our business and industry partners participating.

We have to help students understand that the path to retirement may have many turns where once it was very straight, and it may even end abruptly. And what do you do when there’s no longer a job available for you? We have to prepare young people for this.

How do you incorporate sustainability into your programmes and ideology? Because sustainability is often just perceived from an environmental perspective. Obviously that's a huge part of it, but I think it overarches everything.

 Yes, sustainability is very important and has many different aspects. Apart from the environmental perspective, it’s also about looking at how we make the programmes and the instructional goals sustainable in the long term. I think it’s an inherent flaw of schools that they do not help students understand why we are doing what we are doing. When I was a student I never understood how what I was doing fitted into the larger picture of preparation for my chosen career path. If students understand how what they’re participating in fits the purpose of what they’re trying to do, that’s a sustainable approach because they will continue to invest time and energy into that. This extends to work-life balance. At work, we want you at your best. But that means also recognising that in the modern work environment you have to foster a sustainable lifestyle that allows you to be at your best when it’s time for you to work. There is much more discussion now about flexible work environments. Education has pushed back against some of these alternative approaches, and we have to be much more receptive in the future.

I hope that we can position ENS to be at the front end of the coming changes rather than at the back end trying to catch up, that we’ll be thinking about sustainability in a lot of different ways. To me, it’s about getting to the core of why we do what we do, and how do we invest that time and energy into making a better person. In our central office we traditionally ask our employees for five KPI goals, and this year I’ve asked them to include a personal growth goal. This is me saying, I value you as an employee and I want to see you grow. If you can expand your capacity, you have more value as an employee to me. These can include pursuing a degree, writing a book, exercise, whatever makes you more healthy, happy and fulfilled. You’ll bring that to the workplace and bring much more energy to the table.