"Foreword “Flexibility and autonomy” as part of a broader reflection around future-oriented curriculum
This report, entitled “Curriculum Flexibility and Autonomy”, produced by the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 project, is one in a series of six reports presenting, for the first time, international analyses on curriculum with the aim of supporting countries in their curriculum reform efforts.
Curriculum reform is pivotal because it acts as a significant driver of student performance and well-being. A well-designed curriculum ensures consistent quality across different educational settings and age groups, contributing to equity in education. It provides a framework that supports teachers, facilitates parent-teacher interactions, and maintains educational continuity across various levels. Moreover, curriculum reform is essential for keeping the educational content relevant and responsive to societal changes and innovations. Without periodic updates, a curriculum risks stifling creativity and not aligning with the students' and society’s evolving needs. Curriculum reform has proved to be a real challenge for countries at each phase of its unfolding with unintended consequences been experienced from design to implementation to its evaluation. While remaining a domestic issue, policy makers have gradually come to the realisation that there is much to learn about how to successfully manage “curriculum change” from other countries’ experiences. This realisation, coupled with the aspiration of governments to find some common language to articulate a broader vision of education to inform future curricula, are at the origin of the OECD Future of Education 2030 project. The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 (E2030) project, which will evolve into Education 2040, was launched in 2015 to help countries adapt their education systems to better meet the demands of the 21st century. Specifically, the project aims to support countries in their efforts to respond to the followingfar-reaching questions:
• “What” questions - what kinds of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values are necessary for students and teachers to understand, engage with and shape a changing world towards a better future in 2030? • “How” questions - how to design learning environments that can foster these competencies, i.e. how to design and implement future-oriented curricula?
The answer to the first question has developed into a comprehensive future-oriented learning framework, the OECD Learning Compass 2030, which sets out an aspirational vision for the future of education grounded on the notions of student agency, co-agency, and well-being as powerful means for positive transformation in education and in society. Specifically, student agency refers to the belief that one can shape one’s own future rather than being shaped by it. (...)" OECD (2024), Curriculum Flexibility and Autonomy: Promoting a Thriving Learning Environment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/eccbbac2-en.