New HP Report Highlights Durable Skills as Key to Future of Work

By Omolabake Fasogbon

Policymakers in Nigeria and worldwide should prioritise durable skills such as creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration to prepare young people for the future of work, a new report by technology firm, HP has stressed.

 The HP Futures 2026 report was led by HP, the Global Learning Council and the Education Leaders Forum. It brought together 58 experts in education, policymaking and the future of work.

The report maintained that durable skills should be a core part of education systems and not treated as secondary or extracurricular.

 It called for these skills to be resourced, timetabled and assessed accordingly, and for greater support for educators.

 To keep durable skills from becoming another source of inequality, it recommended that programmes for public systems and low-resource settings use teacher-mediated AI, low-bandwidth delivery and predictable costs.

  Literacy, numeracy and identity-forming learning should stay at the core of education, it said, with creative, hands-on methods used to teach fundamentals and durable skills together.

 The report identified assessment as the biggest bottleneck to building these skills at scale and urged policymakers to create standardised assessment pathways recognised by higher education institutions and employers across countries.  It added that students’ voices should inform the design of curricula.

 “Educators, policymakers and employers share a responsibility to prepare young people for the opportunities and challenges they will encounter throughout their lives and careers. As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms how we learn and work, that responsibility has never been more important,” said Chief Commercial Officer at HP and Chair of HP Futures, David McQuarrie.

 Also, Director and Global Head, Education Business and Strategy at HP, Mayank Dhingra revealed that in the report, experts called for new education models and for students to have interoperable, transnational ways to credential their durable skills, giving higher education institutions and employers a common benchmark.

 He added that they implored policymakers to act immediately so that AI-era readiness and durable skills ownership do not become another source of structural inequality.

 “We urge policymakers and education leaders in Nigeria and around the world to review their findings, and draw on them as they work to create education systems that will set students up for success in the brave new world we are entering,” he said.