The 21st Century Classroom

What should the 21st century primary classroom look like?

To me, it's incredible that some of our children will live and work in the 22nd century. The world they live in will be shaped by the decisions we make today and the education they receive.

I have also been reflecting on the things that have remained consistent in education.

Prehistoric people would sit around a campfire and listen to stories, some of which would have conveyed important lessons for survival.

Aristotle's school of 335BC, the 'Lyceum' featured lectures and a library, although Aristotle would often lecture as he walked the grounds!

The 1880 Education Act, which made education compulsory for children aged 5 - 10, brought children away from dangerous work into the relative safety of a classroom, with desks, a curriculum and a teacher.

The human elements of education have remained constant for thousands of years.

One thing that all of these have in common is essentially storytelling, which I believe remains a fundamental human need. Listening to lessons, experiences and stories goes beyond the conveying of knowledge, although this is important. Listening to stories connects us and lets us learn from the communication of the storyteller and the reactions of other audience members. Listening teaches children patience and how to save their questions until an appropriate time. Fundamentally, it is an enjoyable, human experience.

Huge progress has been made in education since Victorian and ancient times. This is true in terms of understanding the differing needs of learners and the benefits of collaborative, creative work. I remember doing my PGCE and being shown a collaborative document, thinking how groundbreaking this was. To modern children, multimedia, creative, collaborative work like this is part of their everyday routine.

Children in 21st century schools learn about topics that would have seemed inconceivable to previous generations - scenes from Star Trek of children learning about 'warp theory' seem a natural progression from learning that now takes place about quantum mechanics, microbiology and the 21st century world.

The amount of knowledge and information available to children instantly is staggering, as is the ability of technology such as AI help students access and understand this.

Yet for all of this progress, when we are designing 21st century education, it is important not to lose track of the things we need as humans. These are things we have always needed and that we must ensure are present when we design present and future learning experiences.

Meeting children's needs in an increasingly digital world

According to a report by the European Centre for Environment and human health, quoting the 'Wellbeing, Space and Society' journal, 34% of children don't play outside on school nights and 20% of children don't play outside at weekends. https://www.ecehh.org/news/children-dont-play-outdoors/

A Save the Children report found similar statistics, citing research carried out by OnePoll, which surveyed 3000 adults and children and found that only 27% regularly played outside, compared to 80% of those currently aged between 55 and 64.

The report quoted Helen Dodd, Professor of Child Psychology at Exeter University, who said,

"To have just 27% of children playing out today compared to 80% in the past represents a huge change to the nature of childhood experiences. It's logical to expect this to have consequences for young people's development. As a society, perhaps we're not taking this seriously enough."

At the same time, screentime is increasing among children.

The government report, 'Screentime: impacts of education and wellbeing' reported a CHILDWISE survey that found children between 7 - 8 estimated they spent 2 hours 54 minutes looking at screens per day. This rose to 3 hours 12 minutes for children aged 9 -10 and 4 hours 12 minutes for children aged 11 - 12. The government report did not that there are educational benefits to screentime, such as educational content available online, but also highlighted the feeling of parents that they did not know what their children were doing online and the availability of harmful online content.

As reported by Specsavers, screens themselves can have effects on eyesight. Sleep is also a factor.

Screentime can also replace other physical activities that promote exercise, communication, resilience and creativity. It is important that when we are designing 21st century education, we plan for children to have access to digital tools that let them create, communicate and collaborate, tools that they use and enjoy positively and tools that remove barriers for learning, while also ensuring we provide children with opportunities to exercise, play physically and develop interpersonal and social skills.

What are the implications for this in terms of the 21st century school? I have highlighted two issues related to screentime - the physical effects of too much screentime and the need to ensure that children remain active, communicative and creative when screens are present. To address the second point, schools must ensure that screens are used to promote thinking and collaboration and effective creative work, while also providing opportunities for the development of physical and fine motor skills. There are some incredible creative opportunities available through use of digital technology, Book Creator for iPads, Canva for Education, Minecraft and programming are good examples. Coupled with opportunities for sport, craft work, physical games and puzzles, reading books and personal interaction, schools can achieve the best of the digital and physical worlds.

Enfranchised young people

In this blog post, I write about ways that technology can be used to develop agency in primary-aged children. Children should be aware of their own progress and needs in education. This makes them active participants in their learning, who understand and value their education.

Through a well organised virtual learning environment (VLE) like Google Classroom, or though online services like code.org, we can give children new levels of understanding and control over their learning. Children can access resources as they need them, including digital materials, videos and AI generated content. While they may still join in whole-class inputs and discussions, they have opportunities to learn according to their own individual learning goals, which they become increasingly aware of.

Project work can be highly motivating for children, giving them a sense of purpose and ownership over their learning. Through careful planning, schools can ensure that children learn and apply skills and knowledge through projects that children genuinely care about and are invested in. I would mention the Apps for Good project as one that has the potential to combine maths, writing, coding, design and science work, while also developing children's understanding of the environment and presentational skills.

The classroom of the future is one where children value and appreciate their education as a means of improving themselves and their society. For me, developing agency is such a big part of this and technology offers effective ways of facilitating this.

Required skills

What skills should children be developing in the 21st century? Do we teach these sufficiently in primary education?

In computing, computational thinking is an example of the recognition of teaching children skills alongside knowledge. Children learn to decompose a problem, look for patterns and use repetition, focus on important information and create a solution as an algorithm. I think this has potential for a thinking approach that is common across subjects. Thinking skills should involve children understanding growth mindset, that success in a problem involves repeated attempts, failure and resilience. Again, in computing, this is present though teaching debugging, and this approach could be extended into other subjects.

Communication and oracy were highlighted as needing greater attention by the recent 2025 curriculum review. Oracy is the foundation for successful communication in social, academic and eventually professional contexts. The 21st century school teaches children how to be successful orators, negotiators and listeners and gives them opportunities to practise these.

Schools can promote oracy through planning it into subjects across the curriculum, including computing as shown here. Oracy skills should be taught expressly and children given time to practise these. Classrooms and schools might be rearranged to facilitate oracy, including areas for presentations, discussion and collaboration.

Other skills recommended by the 2025 review as needing further development were financial literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy, as well as education on climate change and sustainability. The 21st century school ensures that all of these are developed through the curriculum, ensuing that children are ready to enter and participate in society.

Knowledge

One of my favourite quotes relating to education is 'knowledge is what we think with', attributed to Greg Ashman. This quote is often discussed to highlight the importance of applying knowledge through thinking. For me, it also emphasises that knowledge itself is important, as a structure for thinking.

With the speed and ease that knowledge is available, it is easy to think that the skills of searching for knowledge replace the importance of knowledge itself. For young children especially, this is far from the truth. The knowledge they learn in primary school helps them to make sense of and talk about the world around them, as well as think and form their own ideas. Children should be able to look at and talk about a castle, planets in the sky, books, numbers and examples of art and music. As Tom Sherrington explains through analogy, knowledge is the trunk of the learning tree, with creativity being the foliage and the stable conditions being the roots.

While the need for knowledge remains, the content of that knowledge might change in the 21st century. In the 2025 review, the government highlighted the need for greater education on climate change and sustainability. Other areas that children will need to understand more about include AI literacy, robotics, democracy, society and social justice.

Children of the 21st century will need access to nature for learning and their physical and mental health

Effective learning for all

Medical advances have given us a much greater appreciation of the needs of all learners and ways to overcome the barriers that they face. The expectation is that all learners have equal access to opportunities to learn, experience and enjoy education and contribute to society. This understanding has empowered children with special needs and benefited society as we tap into talent that might otherwise be missed.

At the same time, technology is developing to address an increasing number of needs. Technology, alongside other interventions and provision, means that in the 21st century, our goal is to empower and provide for all learners, whatever their background or needs.

While there is something human and necessary about a teacher addressing a class and guiding them in their learning, this is not the only model of learning available in the 21st century. Children can learn from resources made available by the teacher, from online services and libraries of knowledge, from each other and from reflections on their own learning and progress. The classroom of the 21st century might be teacher-led, but with children who know how to learn independent of the teacher when the teacher is focused elsewhere. These children continue to work, evaluate and improve, including through use of available technology.

Conclusions

On the surface, the classroom of the late 21st century might not look very different to the classroom of today, or in some ways, the classrooms of the past. Children will always need a human leader, role model and teacher. This need goes beyond providing effective education, it is biological. Children need someone to emulate, someone to nurture and care for them, someone who has experienced education and childhood themselves.

Paradoxically, in an increasingly digital world, schools may need to strive to provide more opportunities for human and physical interaction and guidance for children in developing skills relating to these. Schools might need to give children more opportunities to experience and interact with animals and nature and to learn to value and appreciate their natural environment.

At the same time, 21st century schools will embrace the powerful technological tools around them and teach children to use these positively. Children will learn to harness the power of tools that allow for new types of creativity, data collection, communication, collaboration and personalised learning.

It is time to clarify what we want the classroom to look like, and what we want to see happening there. This is our destination, which informs the choices we make about technology along the way.

Of course, all this is written from a 2026 perspective, it will be interesting to see how well it holds up in 2100!