This is question that garners agree­ment and begins debates. We cross a tur­bu­lent land­scape where com­pet­ing def­i­n­itions of lead­er­ship abound, where the very nature of lead­er­ship is the stuff of argu­ment, where con­flict­ing philoso­phies of edu­ca­tion each gen­er­ate their own under­stand­ing of what makes for an effec­tive leader and how a good leader should behave, and where notions of how we must go about edu­cat­ing and train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of edu­ca­tion lead­ers scat­ter in every direc­tion at once.

But such obser­va­tions are not a coun­sel of despair. Far from it! Just as edu­ca­tion itself can never be a sci­ence in any accepted sense – it is a sphere in which bat­tles will always be fought between philoso­phies, beliefs, ide­olo­gies, cul­tures, prej­u­dices and his­to­ries – so these same bat­tles are reflected in the ever-restless and excit­ing debates and dis­cus­sions around lead­er­ship in education.

What­ever our own stand­point might be, we should accept that one voice is often miss­ing from this unruly dis­course: that of young peo­ple, the very group most often affected by the deci­sions of edu­ca­tion lead­ers. Just as they are absent from edu­ca­tional debates gen­er­ally, so youth­ful voices are too often muted when the topic is the lead­er­ship of the social good that is utterly cen­tral to their futures: their edu­ca­tion.

Edu­ca­tion Fast For­ward (EFF), an orga­ni­za­tion spon­sored jointly by Promethean and Cisco, brings together lead­ing global experts and change agents from the world of edu­ca­tion to dis­cuss ‘the top­ics that mat­ter most’. Joining with the online leadership community GETideas.org the organization seeks to leverage all forms of social media to distribute knowledge and awareness of these important topics.

In July 2012, in the most recent of the five debates orga­nized by EFF, a group of elo­quent and youth­ful voices debated the topic ‘From Learner Voice to Global Peace’. The young peo­ple were located all across the globe and came together pri­mar­ily through the won­der of Telep­res­ence (TP), a high-definition video con­fer­enc­ing tech­nol­ogy. The dis­cus­sion that day was not only intel­li­gent and thought­ful: it was truly inspir­ing for every­one involved. The full debate can be watched and lis­tened to on Promethean Planet.
And now, in Jan­u­ary 2013, dur­ing the annual Edu­ca­tion World Forum, to be held in Lon­don, another group of excep­tional young peo­ple will come together through the magic of TP to talk about ‘From Learner Voice to Emerg­ing Lead­ers’. It will bring together articulate and intelligent voices from the world’s youth to discuss issues relevant to young people themselves and to their education.  Those of us involved in EFF have some hopes and expec­ta­tions of what might come out of the event, but we are also highly aware that there must be a gen­uine space in amongst our pre­sump­tions for the young peo­ple them­selves to come to the fore dur­ing and beyond the dis­cus­sion.

The discussion to be had will involve:

• the struc­ture of cur­ricu­lum
• how edu­ca­tion is deliv­ered across the world
• the rel­e­vance of edu­ca­tion to their lives
• how to encour­age real change in the rela­tion­ships between peo­ple in edu­ca­tion sys­tems

As this event brings together many education policy makers, we need all pol­icy mak­ers to take on board the knowl­edge that they are mak­ing deci­sions now that will affect the gen­er­a­tion ahead, and per­haps more than one gen­er­a­tion ahead. We also need the policy makers to realise the extra­or­di­nary value that can be created by tack­ling education’s chal­lenges with peo­ple rather than doing it to them.

And all of this will be hap­pen­ing across a truly inter­na­tional matrix of con­nec­tions, cross­ing coun­tries, cul­tures, and com­mu­ni­ties. In the New Year I will be blog­ging again with details of the date and time, and with infor­ma­tion about the key speak­ers, young and not-so-young, who will be lead­ing the discussion.

Watch out for that!