5th iNet International Conference, 26 28 November 2008

Futures Vision is the Trust's innovation network. For several years the Vision 2020 group led the way in encouraging the dissemination and implementation of innovation in affiliated schools. Now that nearly 2,300 schools worldwide are affiliated to the Specialist Schools Trust and iNet, Futures Vision is envisaged as an inclusive network for all schools that are actively pushing back the boundaries in transforming learning. Its objectives are:

• to seek out and support innovative good practice in affiliated schools and disseminate this via the Trust's regional, national and international networks;
• to encourage programmes of practitioner research and regular publication of good practice, online and in Snapshots;
• to engage headteachers, leadership teams, subject leaders, teachers, support staff and school students in envisioning possible futures;
• to influence and inform the future developments in educational practice, nationally and internationally;
• to develop and maintain relationships and networks with other transformational groups, bodies and agencies; and,
• to identify and promote education business links and gain business support for the transformation agenda and other Trust initiatives.

A policy group of leading international headteachers and principals (primary and secondary), with rotating membership, will be responsible for creating and maintaining the Futures Vision network. This will include the formation of:

• UK regional and international groups;
• teacher groups in affiliated schools, composed of teachers in their first five years of teaching;
• student groups communicating internationally;
• a video-conferencing programme for teachers and students;
• an annual online conference;
• a regular futures international conference; and,
• Futures Vision school awards.

The first exploratory video conference meeting between UK and Australian principals has recently taken place, but now is the time to register your school's interest in Futures Vision. As Professor Hedley Beare said in Creating the Future School:

'...schooling is a future-oriented business. Ideally, schools should be anticipatory communities, modelling the conditions in the emergent world which young people are about to enter as adults ... The change imperative waits for no one'.

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