The harbour is never still. Each morning, the tide redraws the shoreline — familiar yet changed. The world of learning feels the same. Artificial intelligence advances faster than ethics, global inequality widens, and climate anxiety colours the choices of a new generation. In this moving water, certainty is rare, but rhythm is possible.

You stand in the foyer of the 2025 Yidan Prize Summit venue, the lighthouse that guided your thoughts still flashing steadily in the distance; now the light seems multiplied — hundreds of participants preparing to take part, each bringing a question, a perspective, a story. One light helps you find direction; many lights together reveal the coastline — transforming separate insights into connection and continuity.

1. Stepping into Shared Light

This year’s Summit gathers more than 500 participants from over 40 countries across 6 continents — teachers, researchers, funders, entrepreneurs, and policymakers — each exploring what it means to learn, teach, and lead in an era of transformation. The conversations will be diverse, but the shared mission remains: to navigate Education at a Crossroads with humility and imagination.

You might come with your own goals: to deepen understanding of AI’s role in classrooms, to reconnect with peers after years of digital distance, or to discover how philanthropy can enable long-term change. Whatever your reason, the value of the Summit depends not on how much you collect, but on how deeply you connect—the moments when an idea lands close to your own practice.

“Which ideas echo what I already care about, and which ones challenge how I’ve seen things until now?”

2. Listen for patterns, not perfection.

The Summit will open with keynotes delivered by Professor Ju-Ho Lee of KDI School and Andreas Schleicher of the OECD. In a volatile world, the test of education is not what we know, but how well we adapt.

From there, three panels will anchor the exploration of this theme.

• From Chalkboards to Chatbots explores how governments and schools can integrate AI responsibly, featuring UNESCO’s Dr Fengchun Miao, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Science and Higher Education HE Sayasat Nurbek, and other innovators.
• Synergy Unleashed examines the power of cross-sector partnerships, with Dr Peter Materu (Mastercard Foundation), Dr Laura Savage (International Education Funders Group), and HE Serigne Mbaye Thiam (Global Partnership for Education).
• Agents of Change highlights leadership and agency, featuring Bassem Saad (Queen Rania Foundation), Kiran Bir Sethi (Riverside School), and Marjorie Yang (Esquel Group), exploring how empowerment starts within classrooms and communities.

“What threads connect these stories across systems and regions? Where do they touch my own practice?”

3. The Learning Playground

You enter a space designed for doing rather than watching. It feels like stepping into a studio: tables dotted with simple prototypes, prompts that invite you to test, tweak, and ask “what if.” A facilitator hands you something to try — nothing polished, everything purposeful.

You notice how quickly the room shifts from presentation to participation: strangers sketching together, debating trade-offs, sharing “this would work in my context if…” You realise how quickly thinking changes shape when many hands touch the same problem. By the time you leave, there’s ink on your fingers, a new connection in your notebook, and one tangible next step you didn’t have before.

“If I could test one idea I’ve seen today, what would I prototype back home?”

4. Conversations that Change Course

Every transformation begins as a conversation — one that turns separate insights into connection and continuity. In Behind the Scenes: Stories of Turning Points, you listen not as an observer but as someone finding direction through others’ journeys. Their stories become mirrors, shaping how you see your own work unfolding.

• Dr Rukmini Banerji (Pratham, India) — shows how small-group learning scaled precisely because it stayed human, proving that persistence and empathy can travel farther than ambition alone.
• Professor Usha Goswami (University of Cambridge, UK) — bridges neuroscience and pedagogy, reminding us that understanding how children learn is also understanding how adults must keep learning too.
• Angeline Murimirwa (CAMFED, Africa) — turns girls’ education into generational leadership, showing that empowerment spreads strongest when rooted in collective care.

As their stories unfold, something shifts in you: insight becomes invitation. You begin to sense that transformation isn’t built from grand gestures, but from dialogue sustained over time — one voice responding to another, until movement becomes shared meaning.

“Where in my own work could dialogue—not direction—be the catalyst for change?”

5. Making Connections That Last

Every Summit ends the same way change begins — with a small, deliberate act of connection. If you have asked yourself: What am I genuinely trying to learn next? Now, that question meets its next companion: How will I keep it alive once I leave here?

Across the education field, research consistently shows that ideas endure when they move through networks rather than hierarchies. Studies of international education reform by the OECD (2024) and Brookings Institution (2023) note that successful innovation often grows not from scale but from iteration — the repeated testing and refining of one clear idea in community. The World Bank’s work on Learning Engineering echoes this: progress accelerates when educators prototype, share, and adapt together rather than chase perfection alone.

This Summit becomes your live experiment in that principle. Every conversation you’ve had — in panels, hallways, or the Learning Playground — is a form of prototyping. Each question, a hypothesis. Each follow-up, a small test of whether clarity can travel.

“How would this insight change the way I design a lesson, a meeting, or a decision next week?”

“Who will I follow up with in 30 days, and what will I share back?”

7. Seeing the Larger Constellation

Across the harbour, many lights shimmer over shifting water — each signal distinct, yet moving in rhythm and part of a shared horizon. From technology to collaboration to leadership, the message remains constant: progress does not depend on solitary expertise, but on collective learning that holds both urgency and care.

The true value of this gathering lies not only in its content, but in the alignment it creates — a shared tempo among people who might never have met, now pulsing in the same direction.

It feels fitting that the Yidan Prize Foundation stands behind this work not as the brightest light, but as the beacon that keeps all others visible — connecting educators, researchers, and communities so that insight becomes movement and dialogue becomes change.

Each participant becomes part of this constellation. Together, these lights form a horizon that guides education systems toward what every child deserves: innovation grounded in humanity, and humanity strengthened by learning.

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This article originally appeared on Future Ready Childhood 1 December 2025. No endorsement by Future Ready Childhood is implied.