By Georgina Badine
There’s a phrase Johann Hari uses that resonates deeply with me: our schools have become factories of compliance. I see it everywhere. Young people drilled to tick boxes, to pass tests, to fit into standardised categories. What they’re not learning is how to think, how to imagine, or how to adapt. We are shaping students to survive in systems that no longer exist, rather than preparing them to thrive in the unpredictable realities that lie ahead.
The result? Graduates who are disengaged, employers frustrated by their lack of readiness, and a generation taught to play safe when the world needs them to take risks. It is a crisis we can no longer afford to ignore.
And the urgency is only increasing. By 2030, AI is predicted to replace 300 million jobs, with 41% of companies worldwide planning to reduce their workforce. Think about that. If our schools continue producing risk-averse learners who can only follow instructions, they will be the first to be left behind. The future belongs to those who can do what machines cannot: think critically, create boldly, and connect human to human.
I have worked in big corporations and with young people alike, and the gap between what our schools deliver and what our future requires could not be starker. Creativity, the UK’s most powerful export is treated as an afterthought. The irony is unbearable: we are brilliant at creativity, but we fail to teach it.
Sir Ken Robinson once said that schools kill creativity. He was right. We don’t grow into imagination; we are educated out of it. And still, more than 15 years after his words shook the world, little has changed.
Instead, we continue to prize the “right” answer above the right question. We value conformity over curiosity. We produce cautious, risk-averse learners when what the future needs are innovators, collaborators, and problem-solvers.
And we see the consequences everywhere. More than one in ten graduates are unemployed, and many more are underemployed. At the same time, apprenticeships in tech, digital entrepreneurship, and creative industries are growing faster than traditional roles. Yet our schools behave as though the pinnacle of success is simply getting into university.
This is not just an academic failure. It is a social and economic one. The creative industries add more than £100 billion a year to the UK economy and employ millions. Advertising alone brings in billions in exports. Yet if you walk into a classroom today, you will rarely find creativity treated as core. Children who shine in art, music, or design are still told these are hobbies, not careers.
And the human cost is heartbreaking. Parents are told their child is “struggling” because they don’t excel at maths or English, but almost never because the system is failing to recognise their true strengths. I have seen too many children lose confidence before they even have the chance to discover what they might bring to the world.
This is about more than jobs. It is about citizenship. The challenges ahead, climate change, AI, global inequality, cannot be solved by passive learners trained to repeat facts. We need young people who can think critically, empathise deeply, and act imaginatively. If we continue down the path of compliance-first education, we risk raising a generation unprepared for both democracy and the economy.
At Invicta Vita, I have seen what happens when you flip this narrative. When creativity and empathy sit at the centre of learning, something shifts. Young people come alive. They stop asking, “what do I need to do to pass?” and start asking, “what do I need to do to solve this?” They grow resilient, collaborative, and confident.
I know this because I’ve lived both worlds, from the fast moving financial sector to the frontlines of social change. And I am convinced that we are educating for yesterday, not tomorrow.
The good news is that change is possible. We can build schools where creativity is treated like literacy and numeracy: fundamental. We can embrace real-world learning collaboration, experimentation, presentation, digital storytelling, as essential skills. We can acknowledge multiple pathways to success, instead of insisting that university is the only one.
This is not about lowering standards. It’s about raising them to meet reality.
So here is my message: if the UK is to thrive, we must align our schools with our true strengths. Creativity is not a luxury. It is survival. It is the beating heart of our economy, our democracy, and our shared humanity.
Compliance may have served the industrial age. But for our children’s future, creativity is everything. The time to act is now.
For further information visit: www.invictavita.co.uk
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