Learning to fail, not failing to learn

Education systems must continuously evolve and improve in order to meet the diverse needs of today’s learners. This urge for innovation and improvement is at the top of policy agendas across the OECD. However, innovation can be inhibited by governance systems that seek to minimise risk and errors. Although an important element of accountability, they can also inadvertently serve to entrench the status quo. Innovation in education requires careful risk-taking and the accompanying possibility of failure. This chapter discusses two ways in which this can be accomplished: Through experimentation, i.e. the testing of innovative programmes in a limited magnitude and scope as well as by developing a governance system that can learn from failures as well as successes. This chapter argues that both are useful and necessary elements of a modern, evolving governance system, and provides a brief overview of how each of these two elements might play out in modern education.