Policymakers in Nigeria and globally have been urged to prioritise durable skills that will be essential in future workplaces.

The recommendation is contained in the Futures 2026 report, which convened 58 experts in education, policymaking and the future of work to examine how education systems can equip young people for the future.

The report was led by HP, the Global Learning Council and the Education Leaders Forum.

According to the document, policymakers should develop clear blueprints to help students build durable skills such as creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration, and ensure that such skills are not treated as secondary or extracurricular.

It stated that durable skills are becoming the core infrastructure of future readiness and must be resourced, timetabled and assessed accordingly.

The report also recommended the design of future skills-building programmes for public systems and low-resource contexts to prevent durable skills from becoming another source of inequality, using methods such as teacher-mediated artificial intelligence, low-bandwidth delivery, and predictable costs.

It further called on policymakers to keep literacy, numeracy and identity-forming learning at the core of education, while using creative, hands-on approaches to deliver both fundamentals and durable skills simultaneously.

The report said durable skills must become a core part of education systems rather than an optional addition, and called for greater support for educators who remain central to helping students develop creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration skills valued by employers.

It noted that assessment remains the biggest bottleneck to widespread building of durable skills, adding that education systems need to create standardised assessment pathways for durable skills that are recognised by higher education institutions and employers across geographies.

The report also argued that Nigeria and other education systems should take students’ voices into account when creating durable skills-based curricula.

The Chief Commercial Officer at HP and Chair of HP Futures, David McQuarrie, said that educators, policymakers and employers share a responsibility to prepare young people for the opportunities and challenges of their lives and careers.

He said as artificial intelligence (AI) transforms how people learn and work, education systems must do more to help students develop, demonstrate and continuously strengthen capabilities that will remain valuable regardless of how technology evolves.

The Director and Global Head of Education Business and Strategy at HP, Mayank Dhingra, said experts in the report called for new education models that take durable skills into account, and for students to be offered interoperable, transnational means to credentialise their skills so that higher education institutions and employers share a common benchmark.

He added that experts also called on policymakers to take immediate action to ensure AI-era readiness and durable skills ownership does not become another source of structural inequality.

The survey for the report was conducted online between May and June, and received 6,206 responses from students in 37 countries across versions published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia, Italian and Arabic.

Respondents ranged from under 12 to over 25 years old, with 88 per cent stating an age between 12 and 17.

The report also convened 58 experts for roundtable discussions and one-to-one interviews, and compiled case studies from schools, universities, employers, non-governmental organisations and public systems.