2: What Will the Future Hold?

In order to begin the work of thinking about education in a post-pandemic world, we start by spending some time unpicking what the future may look like. Speculating about what the future will hold is a natural human phenomenon. How many of us as children and even as adults have reimagined how the course of our lives might change in response to the various ‘what if’ scenarios we could potentially face? In this case, making reasonable predictions of where we might be as a society, or where we might want to be, means we can begin to think about what part education plays in developing and sustaining such a future. We [the authors] have chosen two predictions to base our ‘future’ on. While they will require a leap of faith from the reader, we argue that the pandemic, having exposed just how fragile jobs are, will force a rethink of the issues of work and economy and we provide one policy response to this which we believe will lead to positive change. In addition, we also choose to take on the ‘sci-fi’ approach to our futurology as there is rationale to believe that certain developments in technology are a realistic prospect.