No, this isn’t the work of trendwatchers, but two reports I want to mention by The World Economic Forum and the OECD.

If we look at this overview we can see the top 10 trends from the World Economic Forum:

And how important are these threats the coming months?

Read the whole report here, but also check this OECD-report with many similar trends but with a focus on what this means for education.

What does it mean for education that our societies are becoming more diverse? What role do new technologies play in our lives, and how can they be best exploited by our schools? What skills should education provide for our increasingly knowledge-intensive societies? This book examines major trends that are affecting the future of education and setting challenges for policy makers and education providers alike. It does not give conclusive answers: it is not an analytical report nor is it a statistical compendium, and it is certainly not a statement of OECD policy on these different developments. It is instead a stimulus for discussion about major tendencies that have the potential to influence education. While the trends are robust, the questions raised for education in this book are intended to be illustrative and suggestive. We invite users to look further and include examples of developments from their own countries or regions in their discussions.

This resource contains 35 subjects each illustrated by two figures on specific trends. The material is organised in five main chapters focusing on globalisation, well-being and lifestyle, skills and the labour market, modern families, and new technologies. In each section a series of questions are posed linking the trend to education, from the level of early childhood education and care through to tertiary education and lifelong learning. While all the trends included are relevant to education, not all relevant trends are in this resource – it is necessarily highly selective. As well as relevance for education, the criterion for selecting trends was the availability of internationally comparable, long-term evidence. The diversity of the topics covered means that in some cases the trends are charted over a short decade; in others, longer-term trends are available. The trends that cover the shortest amount of time look at emerging trends in new technologies.