A friend of mine is a grandparent of a 3-year old. They were playing ‘shop’ the other day and at the point when they came to the sale my friend got confused. Rather than getting coins out their purse, their grand child got their toy mobile out, tapped the till and made a beep noise. Immediately the grandparent’s concern was about how their grandchild might learn about how coinage works, adding coins, etc.

The child’s experience of purchase is completely digital; they were born in lockdown and their entire life has been moulded to the move to online, digital, hybrid and the support of technology. Yes, they’ll start nursery soon; every other child there will likely have had the same experience. The nursery experience will need to be different to reflect their previous experience – their curriculum will look very different to what was delivered, 20, 10, or even 5 years ago.

If we need to do this in education, we will need to follow it through into workplace learning. It is impossible to ignore the shifts which have happened in workplace learning and activity and to kid yourselves that the way you did it will work just won’t wash. Remember, your new graduates are younger than Google and the ways you support these employees and future workforce will need to be very different from what you did before.