Today’s children are studying for jobs that don’t exist yet

The future of education has to be much more interactive and collaborative, believes the Center for Creative Leadership.
By: | September 23, 2019

About two-thirds of children entering primary school will be employed in jobs that don’t currently exist. Based on current trends, this could lead to 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labour market changes over the period from 2015-2020.

On the flip side, less than 5% of all occupations today can be fully automated using current technology said Elisa Mallis, Managing Director and Vice President of Asia-Pacific, Center for Creative Leadership.

Mallis believes that the future of education has to be much more interactive and collaborative. She said, “We can already see changes in Singapore – adjusting skill sets for the future but there is still a long way to go. We have to pull together on a global level what works the best. That is not happening right now.”

However for the majority of existing jobs, robots can do 30% of their activities. Said Mallis, “When the parts that go away are immediately replaced by other interesting work, then the change of course brings optimism and hope.  When the parts that go away leave gaps, then deep fear of becoming irrelevant sets in.” The fear should not outweigh the hope so as to prevent the slow side to negativity.

But there will still be new jobs that emerge in the future solely for humans. So governments, businesses and individuals will need to prepare for future skills requirements.