OECD Learning Compass 2030

Summary

The OECD Learning Compass 2030 is the learning framework produced by the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 project, launched in 2015 by the OECD Education Policy Committee to answer two questions: what knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values today's students need to thrive and shape their world, and how instructional systems can develop them effectively. The framework uses the metaphor of a compass: rather than receiving fixed directions, students learn to navigate unfamiliar contexts themselves, oriented toward individual and collective well-being. Its components are core foundations (literacy, numeracy, data and digital literacy, health, social-emotional skills); knowledge (disciplinary, interdisciplinary, epistemic, procedural); skills (cognitive/meta-cognitive, social/emotional, practical/physical); attitudes and values; three transformative competencies — creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility; and the Anticipation-Action-Reflection (AAR) learning cycle. Student agency and co-agency are central: students act with purpose while embedded in relationships with peers, teachers, families, and communities. The framework is explicitly neither an assessment framework nor a curriculum framework; it is an evolving, co-created reference (governments, academics, school leaders, teachers, students, social partners) meant to be adapted locally, and it connects to the UN Sustainable Development Goals through its well-being orientation.

Guiding Principles

Transferable Skills: The compass is a global reference for transversal competencies — critical and creative thinking, learning-to-learn, self-regulation, collaboration — that project-based aquaponics and 3D-printing programs can map their outcomes against.
Youth Empowerment: Student agency/co-agency is the core concept: learners set goals, reflect, and act responsibly to influence the people and circumstances around them.

Learning Outcomes & Transferable Skills

The framework operationalizes Systems Thinking (the AAR cycle; reconciling tensions and dilemmas), Sustainability Literacy (well-being includes environmental quality and links to the SDGs), and Data Literacy (data and digital literacy as core foundations). Curriculum designers can use it to justify and structure hands-on sustainability programs: a classroom aquaponics loop is a concrete arena for transformative competencies such as creating new value and taking responsibility.

How to Replicate or Build On It

Read the OECD Learning Compass 2030 concept note (PDF, free) for the framework overview, then the companion concept notes on student agency, transformative competencies, core foundations, knowledge, skills, and attitudes/values.
Map your program's outcomes to the compass components to communicate alignment to funders and ministries.
Use the AAR cycle as an assessment design pattern for hands-on builds: anticipate (design), act (build/grow), reflect (data review and iteration).
Consult the OECD Education 2030 curriculum-analysis reports ("What Students Learn Matters" series) for country-level implementation lessons.
Adapt freely — the framework is explicitly designed for local contextualization.

Considerations & Constraints

Cost: All concept notes and reports are free.
Skill Level: unknown — a policy/design framework for system leaders and educators, not a student course.
Space/Climate: Not applicable; globally framed.
Tools Required: None beyond PDF access.
Ongoing Maintenance: Low; the OECD periodically updates the evolving framework.
Access Barriers: Main oecd.org pages can bot-block automated fetches (concept-note PDFs on the content-dam path fetch reliably); conceptual rather than operational — requires translation into classroom practice.

Prerequisites

None.

Primary Source

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/projects/edu/education-2040/concept-notes/OECD_Learning_Compass_2030_concept_note.pdf — official OECD concept note (project hub: https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/).