International Education - a view from Cambridge

International education: a view from Cambridge

We continue our international education debate with a view from Cambridge by Tim Oates, Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment, who looks back to the Middle Ages and the origins of international education before addressing some of the factors affecting the rapid changes in the character of international education today and how they will shape the debate at our conference, International Education: Interpretation, Importance and Impact.

It's about life chances. It's about getting the skills embedded right across the world..."

Tim Oates, Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment

Tim believes that in order for everybody to participate in today's global economy, we need to ensure that life skills and life chances are embedded across the world. A recent visit to Japan revealed the way that particular country's education system is addressing the need to equip their young people with the skills to empathise with and understand other cultures.

Tim recognises the issues facing individual countries in finding space for an international agenda alongside their domestic agenda for education in an ever-crowded curriculum, taking England's approach to Modern Foreign Language learning as an example of how different countries emphasise different areas of the curriculum.

Tim's hope for the conference is that we can begin to create a rationale for the inclusion of an international education agenda across the world by first understanding what international education means in different settings and discussing the unique focusses and pressures in education between different cultures.

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What does international education mean to you?

Different contexts mean different interpretations of international education. We want to know what education without borders means to you.