Future Skills 2030. An Updated Framework for Future Skills.

With the Future Skills 2030 framework, the Stifterverband presents an update of its Future Skills 2021 framework, offering a forward-looking perspective for the next five years, up to 2030. This study addresses current dynamics, identifies key megatrends and derives future competence requirements from them. At its core lies the guiding question of which Future Skills will be particularly important over the coming five years.Executive Summary: Whether in the context of artificial intelligence, climate change or democracy, a world in transformation will require a clear focus on Future Skills across all sectors of education in the coming years – from schools and higher education to vocational training and continuing education. To advance both the content and methodology of the Stifterverband’s 2021 framework, the organisation established an academic task force entitled Future Skills 2030. The task force aimed not only to update the set of skills, but also to strengthen and expand the methodological foundations of the analysis. The updated Future Skills 2030 framework identifies 30 core Future Skills. The Future Skills 2030 framework builds on a stable foundation of Fundamental Future Skills, unfolds across three broad competence areas – transformation, community and digitalisation – and culminates in expert-level competences related to technological excellence. More than 50 experts contributed to the development of the new framework and the formulation of competence descriptions, while over 1,000 respondents from all stakeholder groups confirmed the high relevance of the identified Future Skills for the next five years. Fundamental Future Skills, such as critical thinking and communication, act as key cross-cutting competences and form the foundation for the other Future Skills in the framework. Transformation is becoming the norm. As a result, Transformative Future Skills, such as innovation and sustainability competence, remain highly relevant. The megatrend of artificial intelligence requires all learners to develop Fundamental and Digital Future Skills, including AI literacy and data literacy, alongside specialised AI skills at the expert level. Active engagement with democratic culture is becoming increasingly essential, along with the corresponding Community-Oriented Future Skills such as dialogue competence and responsibility & accountability. At the expert level of technological competence, cybersecurity plays an increasingly important role. Organisations need to expand expertise in this area, particularly in the context of generative AI. Depending on their sector, institutional profile and strategic priorities, institutions may assign different weights to individual Future Skills when developing curricula.