Fostering talent for innovation: an Education and Innovation Practice Community

The Education and Innovation Practice Community will promote the competencies needed to drive deep-tech innovation and successfully navigate the green and digital transitions. This will support more effective policymaking to spur on and sustain innovation in the educational field. The European Commission and OECD are establishing an education and innovation practice community to boost collaboration among different stakeholders. Its main goal is to cultivate innovation competencies and mindsets in secondary schools to prepare students to contribute to innovation in later life.

This community will bring together peers from policy and practice from across OECD and EU countries to build an advanced understanding of competencies that trigger and shape innovation in our economies and societies.

The action particularly highlights the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in helping pupils to acquire innovation competencies in secondary education. Higher education can play a key role in supporting school leadership and teachers in translating these competencies through key mechanisms, including curricula development and implementation, educational resources, initial teacher training, and professional development. Specifically, intensive desk-research is carried out to identify the mechanisms used by HEIs to interact with schools.

At educational policy level, there is still a need to further elaborate guiding frameworks, such as EntreComp, DigComp, and GreenComp, to integrate the development of innovation competencies into school curricula. By the end of 2023, the community will inform and share examples of policy and practice for promoting innovation competencies in secondary schools across OECD and EU countries.

Further information

• Knowledge exchange event on 18 April 2023
• Mailing list registration