Schools need to measure soft skills - Michaela Horvathova (Beyond Education)
In this episode we talk with Michaela Horvathova who is the co-founder and chief education officer at Beyond Education, a company empowering students and schools to develop soft-skills.
The Guest
There are a lot of companies that are developing soft skills through [education] programs, which is something that we actually started with and we still have, but we put it on hold as we understood that what is really needed or what is more of an entry point to schools is assessment.
Meet Michaela Horvathova who is the co-founder and Chief Education Officer at Beyond Education. The company empowers students 10-21 years old with the 21st century competencies, or so called "soft skills” through research-based programs and 1st scientifically validated assessment. She is an international education policy expert having worked for international organisations like the OECD, IB and UNICEF. She has extensive global experience in curriculum design and reform for 21st century skills & competencies, learning outcomes, evaluation & assessment. She is based in Paris, France.
Why soft skills?
In the traditional education system there is a strong tendency to focus on hard skills (knowledge) like reading, writing, maths, languages, science and technology. However, when we know that 65% of students will be doing jobs that do not exist, soft skills development is a critical part of being ready for job success.
Beyond Education has developed a methodology to measure soft skills based on 12 core competencies in 3 areas:
Metalearning: Growth mindset, Metacognition
Skills: Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration
Character: Leadership, Ethics, Resilience, Courage, Curiosity, Mindfulness
For schools they provide both aggregated reports to compare key demographics and grades to inform pedagogical approaches and local, regional, and international benchmarking.
Check out more details on the frameworks and detailed soft skills on the Beyond Education website.
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Episode summary
Michaela from Beyond Education discusses the importance of social emotional skills in education.
Beyond Education aims to empower students by equipping educators with tools to transform education and schools with ways to assess soft-skills.
The education system faces challenges in implementing necessary changes and translating policies into practice.
Beyond Education this year conducted a large-scale assessment in Brazil to 100K students, yielding positive feedback and insights for schools.
The company is currently in the stage of scaling up and improving their go-to-market strategy.
Extracts
The need to educate users
How I see it and what is the challenge is that there is a big discrepancy still between what ministries of education, researchers, policy makers, understand that it's needed and important and what people on the ground understand that is needed.
And this is where the difficulty comes in, because anytime you try to do the change bottom up, you realize that the level of understanding of urgency of change in education is very different. And oftentimes it's not there. And so what is challenging for us is to, while we are trying to transform the education, we also need to basically educate the users and raise awareness about the importance of actually why is this so needed?
Because unfortunately, still in many countries, many schools, many principals, teachers, parents don't necessarily see this urgency and this need change.
Showing the gaps in soft skills with measurement
And so that's when we understood that there is really a big market and big gap and opportunity for us to actually assess the impact of this program, because a lot of schools are trying to do something in it, but they have no idea whether it works and what is the impact of programs on developing these skills.
And so that's why our sort of theory of change is that first we need to, if we really treasure it, we need to measure it. We need to bring focus and awareness to it and then create a need by showing the gaps and then we can propose the programs.
Fundraising
But, finding investors or VCs that are very much aligned with the mission and believe in the mission and understand the mission and of what you're trying to do, I think it's extremely important because, they won't be just financial investors, but they can actually help with different strategic choices and decisions and can stay more for the long run.
Co-founder
Having a co-founder really helps. With both sharing challenges and sharing successes, it's already hard as it is, so I think it would be very hard if I would be doing it really alone. So I think that that's one of the advice, maybe if somebody's thinking whether to do it alone or with the co-founder.
I think that sharing it, again, the ups and downs with someone is really good. And also having a sparring partner about thinking through and reflecting about some important decisions. But also choosing this co-founder carefully because sometimes it can go in different ways. And then I was already mentioning that having investors that are aligned and really believe in the mission, I think is the key.
Being a founder
In general the entrepreneurial journey and building a startup I think for me personally has been the hardest professional experience, but at the same time, the most rewarding one. I believe it's sort of like a true school of life for me, and it helps me to grow professionally and personally. So, I would highly recommend it to anyone, even though it's hard it's really worth it.
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