What are the most important subjects in school? Different teachers will of course give different answers to this question, but as far as the government - and much of the general public - is concerned, there is little debate. Through multiple iterations of the national curriculum, what are considered to be the “core” subjects have always remained the same: English, maths and science.

But this long-standing focus could be about to change. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Learning Compass for 2030, skills that will prepare students for the jobs they will do in the future - such as metacognitive and social and emotional skills - should increasingly be taking centre stage in education.

This message is also being hammered home by the World Economic Forum (WEF). In October last year, it published a list of the top 10 skills needed for 2025 (see box, below). In a corresponding article, the Forum’s founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, argued that individuals will quickly need to “reskill and upskill” in these areas in order to respond to the double challenge of the economic impacts of the pandemic and the increasing automation that is transforming jobs.

The idea that so-called “lifelong” skills are important isn’t new, of course, and many teachers already foster their growth without realising it. However, the current shift in dialogue about exactly how prominent a position such skills should occupy in the classroom means that teachers may soon need to start paying more attention to how they incorporate them into their subject teaching.

So, what are the lifelong skills identified as being the most important for students to learn?

The WEF’s list is a good place to start. This includes skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and resilience.

Miho Taguma, senior education analyst at the OECD, adds that skills that put student agency at their centre will become increasingly important. “The skills include things like having a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset, so students can continue learning, rather than giving up. Grit is another one, and there’s also self-efficacy,” she says.

“In our Learning Compass, we really highlight the importance of student agency and how they actually relate themselves to the world. For example, self-identity is really important for migrant children, as is the sense of hope. Openness, perspective and empathy are also key - they all relate to agency.”

Anecdotally, all teachers know the difference that skills such as resilience and empathy can make to a child’s development, but what does the research have to say about the impact that they can have when taught explicitly?

Getting a clear picture is difficult here. However, if we take the example of metacognitive skills - getting pupils to think about their own learning - there is an increasingly robust evidence base to support the value of teaching these explicitly.

An evidence review from the Education Endowment Foundation, published in 2018, suggested that the use of “metacognitive strategies” by students can be worth the equivalent of seven months’ progress when used well.

The EEF also evaluated programmes that seek to improve “learning to learn” skills and found that the majority had positive impacts, with, on average, around two months’ progress. For three of the programmes, there were indications that they were particularly beneficial for pupils from low-income families.

What’s more, the OECD report suggests that the benefits of metacognitive skills, along with social and emotional skills, are likely to become more apparent with further research in this area, and as the labour market evolves. “As trends such as globalisation and advances in artificial intelligence change the demands of the labour market and the skills needed for workers to succeed, people need to rely even more on their uniquely (so far) human capacity for creativity, responsibility and the ability to ‘learn to learn’ throughout their life,” the report states.

But just how should such skills be taught? Teaching empathy is, after all, quite a different prospect from teaching mathematics. Could we soon see dedicated lifelong skills lessons on the school timetable, taught by dedicated lifelong skills specialists?

Taguma doesn’t think so. She believes the skills should be embedded throughout the curriculum at all ages, rather than taught as standalone topics.

David Gallagher, chief executive of awarding organisation NCFE, agrees with this, and gives an example of what that could look like.

Consider a football match in PE, he suggests. If a team has been beaten 3-0, this shouldn’t be seen as a defeat. It can be a chance to reflect on what went well, what skills were gained - for example, confidence or resilience - and what the players want to improve on for next time. “It’s about looking for every single opportunity that is there for these skills to be threaded and embedded, whether it’s discretely or not,” he says.

This might mean that teachers need to perform an audit of what skills they might already be covering through their subject teaching, and where any gaps might be.

The good news is that, in doing this, teachers will probably realise that much of what they already do in lessons will be supporting students to develop these skills indirectly.

For instance, Taguma suggests supporting the development of empathy through role-play. “In early years, encourage children to play house so they adopt the characters of the mother, friend or husband, as those situations allow them to put their emotions in a different person’s shoes,” she says.

For older students, she recommends that the same effect could be generated through debate or discussion. “Give them a question that is not easy to solve, where there are conflicts and tensions and dilemmas involved, and ask them to see the same situation differently,” she suggests.

Yet while there are plenty of opportunities to develop metacognitive, social and emotional skills through classroom activities, it will also be important for teachers to identify the limitations of teaching in this area.

“Learners learn in different settings, not only in the classroom; they may be learning from friends, parents and communities. Teachers need to become designers and include those informal settings to allow students to pick up on values such as empathy,” says Taguma.

“We know students often learn empathy better through friendships, so rather than teachers trying to teach and lecture and define empathy, it’s important for them to give time to non-formal learning where this can develop. These are skills that are caught, not taught.”

Teachers can’t do it all, then - but what they can do is to allow time in the school day for interactions to take place that support the further development of these skills.

Creating such opportunities matters, says Gallagher, because not all students will have the same chances as others to develop these crucial, overarching skills outside the classroom.

“What if people aren’t born into the right postcode or don’t have nurturing parents or those cultural opportunities, or don’t get to play a team sport? In those cases, education should be a leveller, the thing that gives people the chance to develop these lifelong skills,” he explains.

It’s a complex picture, and both Gallagher and Taguma admit that there are some big challenges to overcome if lifelong skills are going to become more of a focus for schools.

For starters, Taguma says that while specific time needs to be allocated to working on these skills, this would, in an ideal world, be individualised to each student.

“If there are students who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, let’s not bombard them with critical thinking, resilience, growth mindset - it will just overload them.

“What is important is finding the optimal level of input for every student. They are so diverse in their culture, backgrounds and abilities - it’s really time we shifted our teaching and learning towards individualisation.”

Another challenge, Gallagher argues, is how teachers should assess pupils’ progress in these skills. “There need to be regular assessments, but it should be a diagnostic assessment, not an assessment that says you’re doing well or you’re doing badly,” he says. “We need to be constantly asking: how do the learners feel they are getting on? How are they finding meaning? Are they finding connections? How is their confidence? And [then we can use] those assessments as a means of developing an understanding and knowing how to take action, not as a way of discerning what is good and what is bad.”

Tackling these challenges won’t be easy, but Taguma is confident that explicitly developing lifelong skills is something that subject teachers are going to be asked to do more of - and that this is a good thing, because students will only benefit from the increased focus.

“[Artificial intelligence] is going to produce a lot of new jobs and replace a lot of jobs, too. But the ones that won’t be replaced are the ones that use metacognitive skills. AI is really bad at socioemotional skills, interpersonal skills, reading complex context, and this is where our intrinsic human value comes in.

“Empathy and having perspective are very important, and that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.”

Kate Parker is schools and colleges content producer at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 20 August 2021 issue under the headline “Tes focus on…Teaching lifelong skills”