Valerie Hannon is a global thought leader, inspiring systems to re-think what ‘success’ will mean in the C 21st, and the implications for education. The co-founder of both Innovation Unit and of the Global Education Leaders Partnership, Valerie is a radical voice for change, whilst grounded in a deep understanding of how education systems currently work.

Formerly a secondary teacher, researcher and Director of Education for Derbyshire County Council; then an adviser in the UK Department for Education (DfE) during the Blair years, she now works independently to support change programs across the world.

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Talk summary | 21 April 2021

The question of what blocks necessary and urgent change in education must centre on what it is about current attitudes and mindsets that hold current arrangements in place. Unless we understand them, we cannot hope to make progress beyond the superficial. Valerie Hannon argues in her book THRIVE that what is missing is an entirely new, post-humanist (yet profoundly humane) account of the very purpose of learning in the next century. When this is considered, we are forced to recognise how grotesquely misaligned current arrangements are; and have the driving motivation for the changes we need to make.

• Learning A Living: radical innovation in education for work (Bloomsbury 2013)

• Redesigning Education: shaping learning systems around the globe  (Booktrope 2014) 

• Local Learning Ecosystems (WISE 2019)

• THRIVE: the purpose of schools in a changing world  (Cambridge University Press 2021)