hat if the greatest injustice of our time is not poverty or inequality, but our failure to transform the very system that could end them?
Editor’s note: These are remarks lightly edited for digital presentation, made by National Center on Education and the Economy CEO Vicki Phillips at Diplomatic Courier & World in 2050’s Education Futures Forum at the UN General Assembly meetings in September.
At the United Nations General Assembly this year, amid calls for peace, progress, and sustainability, one truth echoed through every hall: education is the foundation beneath every global goal. Yet despite unprecedented knowledge about what works, millions of young people remain unprepared for the world they are inheriting.
This is not a failure of will. It is a failure of design.
Across the globe, nations continue to patch and pilot, tweak and tinker, when what we need is transformation. If we want education to fulfill its promise as a catalyst for human potential, we must reimagine the system itself: how it develops people, how it connects to economies, and how it fuels societies that can withstand uncertainty.
Learning From the World’s Most Effective Systems
At the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), our research across the globe has a specific purpose, which is to turn insight into impact. We study the high–performing and fastest–improving education systems to understand what they do, how they do it, and the context and challenges they face. From Peru’s steady climb on international assessments, to Switzerland’s innovative apprenticeship pathways, to Estonia’s digital literacy revolution, the lesson is clear:
No country can, or should, copy another. But every nation can learn from the rest. Global benchmarking provides the raw material; local context turns it into something that lasts.
In every setting, the most successful systems share one trait: they act on evidence. They treat education not as a social expenditure, but as an investment strategy for national and global prosperity.
A Blueprint for Systems That Work
NCEE’s Blueprint: Designing Systems That Work distills what the world’s most effective education systems have shown us. It is not a manual. It is a map. A set of interdependent drivers that turn aspiration into architecture.
- Prepare young people for long–life learning.
Learning must span an extended lifetime, beginning with high–quality early education and continuing through reskilling and upskilling opportunities for adults. The most resilient economies are those where learning never ends. - Cultivate high–capacity educators.
No education system can rise above the quality of its teachers. Nations that invest in educator preparation, career pathways, and autonomy see returns measured not only in student achievement, but in societal trust and innovation. - Join forces to ensure learners thrive.
The best systems blur the lines between formal and informal learning, linking schools with workplaces, museums, and community spaces. They make education a whole–of–society endeavor. - Think differently about system leadership.
Today’s leaders must hold two time frames at once: short-term wins and long–term transformation. They must build coalitions rooted in vision, evidence, and adaptability. Because, in an age of rapid change, basic leadership is no longer enough.
These four elements, working together, form the scaffolding for thriving systems, ones that serve both economic and civic needs.
What Thriving Looks Like
When leaders use the evidence surfaced in the Blueprint to redesign their systems, the results are visible in the lives of young people.
They master core skills—literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking—that allow them to go deep, reason with evidence, and solve complex problems.
They develop habits of learning and well-being—curiosity, persistence, and mental health—that make them long life learners.
They gain contemporary skills—digital fluency, creativity, and adaptability—that enable them to participate fully in dynamic economies.
And they practice community skills—empathy, collaboration, and respect for diversity—that strengthen democracy and peace.
These outcomes mirror not just SDG 4 on education, but the entire 2030 Agenda. Education links to decent work (SDG 8), gender equality (SDG 5), good health (SDG 3), and strong institutions (SDG 16). When we get education right, every other goal accelerates.
The Global Imperative
Education is not only about children, it is about entire societies.
A system that fails to teach resilience will falter in the face of climate change or disinformation.
A system that neglects community skills will fracture under polarization.
And a system that ignores contemporary skills will strand its young people on the wrong side of the digital divide.
To safeguard our shared future, we must stop treating education as a domestic policy issue. It is a peace issue. It is a global survival issue.
From Aspiration to Action
The path forward is clear.. High--performing systems:
- Invest in teachers as knowledge workers, not implementers.
- Redesign schools as launchpads into multiple futures.
- Build adaptive ecosystems that evolve through feedback and data.
- Align every component from curriculum, assessment, instruction, and supports so they work in concert, not in conflict.
This is not utopia. It is already reality in places that have had the courage to act. The evidence exists. The challenge is our collective will.
A Final Question
Fifty years from now, when future generations look back at this moment, at the world assembled at the United Nations in 2025, what will they say we did with the greatest lever we had for human flourishing?
Did we continue to tinker? Or did we transform?
Because when we put evidence in the hands of visionaries, and vision in the hands of leaders, we don’t just change education. We change the future.
a global affairs media network
Stop tinkering, start transforming
Image by Alexander Fox | PlaNet Fox from Pixabay
November 6, 2025
At the UN this year, there was consensus that education is the foundation beneath every global goal. That we are failing to transform education systems despite knowing what that transformation should look like is perhaps the greatest injustice of our time, says NCEE CEO Vicki Phillips.
W
hat if the greatest injustice of our time is not poverty or inequality, but our failure to transform the very system that could end them?
Editor’s note: These are remarks lightly edited for digital presentation, made by National Center on Education and the Economy CEO Vicki Phillips at Diplomatic Courier & World in 2050’s Education Futures Forum at the UN General Assembly meetings in September.
At the United Nations General Assembly this year, amid calls for peace, progress, and sustainability, one truth echoed through every hall: education is the foundation beneath every global goal. Yet despite unprecedented knowledge about what works, millions of young people remain unprepared for the world they are inheriting.
This is not a failure of will. It is a failure of design.
Across the globe, nations continue to patch and pilot, tweak and tinker, when what we need is transformation. If we want education to fulfill its promise as a catalyst for human potential, we must reimagine the system itself: how it develops people, how it connects to economies, and how it fuels societies that can withstand uncertainty.
Learning From the World’s Most Effective Systems
At the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), our research across the globe has a specific purpose, which is to turn insight into impact. We study the high–performing and fastest–improving education systems to understand what they do, how they do it, and the context and challenges they face. From Peru’s steady climb on international assessments, to Switzerland’s innovative apprenticeship pathways, to Estonia’s digital literacy revolution, the lesson is clear:
No country can, or should, copy another. But every nation can learn from the rest. Global benchmarking provides the raw material; local context turns it into something that lasts.
In every setting, the most successful systems share one trait: they act on evidence. They treat education not as a social expenditure, but as an investment strategy for national and global prosperity.
A Blueprint for Systems That Work
NCEE’s Blueprint: Designing Systems That Work distills what the world’s most effective education systems have shown us. It is not a manual. It is a map. A set of interdependent drivers that turn aspiration into architecture.
- Prepare young people for long–life learning.
Learning must span an extended lifetime, beginning with high–quality early education and continuing through reskilling and upskilling opportunities for adults. The most resilient economies are those where learning never ends. - Cultivate high–capacity educators.
No education system can rise above the quality of its teachers. Nations that invest in educator preparation, career pathways, and autonomy see returns measured not only in student achievement, but in societal trust and innovation. - Join forces to ensure learners thrive.
The best systems blur the lines between formal and informal learning, linking schools with workplaces, museums, and community spaces. They make education a whole–of–society endeavor. - Think differently about system leadership.
Today’s leaders must hold two time frames at once: short-term wins and long–term transformation. They must build coalitions rooted in vision, evidence, and adaptability. Because, in an age of rapid change, basic leadership is no longer enough.
These four elements, working together, form the scaffolding for thriving systems, ones that serve both economic and civic needs.
What Thriving Looks Like
When leaders use the evidence surfaced in the Blueprint to redesign their systems, the results are visible in the lives of young people.
They master core skills—literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking—that allow them to go deep, reason with evidence, and solve complex problems.
They develop habits of learning and well-being—curiosity, persistence, and mental health—that make them long life learners.
They gain contemporary skills—digital fluency, creativity, and adaptability—that enable them to participate fully in dynamic economies.
And they practice community skills—empathy, collaboration, and respect for diversity—that strengthen democracy and peace.
These outcomes mirror not just SDG 4 on education, but the entire 2030 Agenda. Education links to decent work (SDG 8), gender equality (SDG 5), good health (SDG 3), and strong institutions (SDG 16). When we get education right, every other goal accelerates.
The Global Imperative
Education is not only about children, it is about entire societies.
A system that fails to teach resilience will falter in the face of climate change or disinformation.
A system that neglects community skills will fracture under polarization.
And a system that ignores contemporary skills will strand its young people on the wrong side of the digital divide.
To safeguard our shared future, we must stop treating education as a domestic policy issue. It is a peace issue. It is a global survival issue.
From Aspiration to Action
The path forward is clear.. High--performing systems:
- Invest in teachers as knowledge workers, not implementers.
- Redesign schools as launchpads into multiple futures.
- Build adaptive ecosystems that evolve through feedback and data.
- Align every component from curriculum, assessment, instruction, and supports so they work in concert, not in conflict.
This is not utopia. It is already reality in places that have had the courage to act. The evidence exists. The challenge is our collective will.
A Final Question
Fifty years from now, when future generations look back at this moment, at the world assembled at the United Nations in 2025, what will they say we did with the greatest lever we had for human flourishing?
Did we continue to tinker? Or did we transform?
Because when we put evidence in the hands of visionaries, and vision in the hands of leaders, we don’t just change education. We change the future.
