Revealed: The skillset today’s students need for tomorrow’s workforce

Close to 60 percent of students entering school this year will graduate to an unknown job market while 40 percent will be self-employed and require an entrepreneurial skillset, said Citizens School founder

Adil Alzarooni, founder of Citizens School

As today’s job market is evolving at breakneck speed, the education system needs to grow in parallel and ensure graduates are equipped with the necessary skills to succeed.

This is easier said when done when 60 percent of students entering school now will graduate into a job market we know nothing about while 40 percent will be self-employed necessitating an education in the entrepreneurial mindset, said Adil Alzarooni, founder of Citizens School, a new K-12 school developed in the UAE by Al Zarooni Emirates Investments which is set to open in September 2022.

“A scary number is that 60 percent of students that will come out of a new school will fall into jobs that we don’t know. Education in the age of the Industrial Revolution was designed to produce a lot of people with certain skill sets that almost are predictable in the way they think.

There was a population and industry boom creating a high need for engineers and doctors and because there was a market gap of these types of professionals, the education system had to evolve to satisfy that substantial gap,” said Alzarooni.

“Nowadays, global population growth is slowing down and it’s probably going to plateau in around 50 years and even start declining. At the same time, the rate of change is so substantial when it comes to technology and lifestyle that again, 60 percent of youth in schools today will graduate into a job market we know nothing about,” he continued.

And while little may be known about what jobs will be needed in the future, Alzarooni shared another figure which indicated that 40 percent of students that will graduate in a few years will be self-employed.

“That means that it doesn’t matter what are you learning, you have to know how to become an entrepreneur – it’s not an option anymore,” said Alzarooni.

“You’re actually no longer educating people to be employees but to know how to do two things very well: find a problem, or an opportunity and team up with people who have different skillsets to solve the problem or to arrive to the potential of an opportunity. In order to do that, you’re talking about communication, social and leadership skills, abilities to project manage, do proper research, to arrive to the ultimate objective, and then the ability to think entrepreneurially,” he continued.

Future of education

The Citizens’ school has a 43,000-square-meter school campus and a capacity for 2,600 children between ages 3 to 18. Its features include a 2,900-square-meter open playing and recreation area, a 1,250-square-meter multi-purpose performing arts and activity hall, a six lane semi-covered swimming pool as well as football and rugby pitches.

“Our motto is the power of choice and what we mean by this is when students graduate, they will b faced with an unpredictable and unknown world where they will be faced with a lot of choices. If we can enable students with the right skillset to be able to choose, then that is powerful. That’s what we want to be able to do,” said Alzarooni.

Speaking about the future of education, Alzarooni said he does not belief it will be fully remote for school-age children, explaining that Citizens School will adopt a “blended learning environment as more of a lifestyle rather than an institution that instills information in your head.”

“Physical skills will continue to be important because they enable collaborative work. Plus there are elements that are relatively hard to arrive to on a purely remote basis, like sports and arts and specialised labs,” he said.

The school will have a creators’ studio to instill in students “the mindset of being able to create things and services” and will introduce elements of digitalisation such as blockchain and 3D printing.

“We want to develop the students’ thinking process and the mindset that they can change the world with data. Having that mentality at younger age means they are always out there thinking about ways to improve the standard of living of humanity. Since day one, they believe they can do it, which is important – whether they decide to do it or not, that’s up to them but that mentality needs to be there,” said Alzarooni.