Time to tackle the misalignment at the heart of education

Arab News

12 hours ago

As we look back on the 2024/25 school year which has just ended, Misk Schools celebrated a defining moment — our first graduating class. But this milestone represents far more than academic tradition. It marks the beginning of a bold, necessary shift in how we think about schooling, success and Saudi Arabia's future.
Founded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Misk Schools was established with a clear mandate — to redefine K–12 education, to prepare the Kingdom's future leaders and to catalyze innovation across the national education system, all in support of Saudi Vision 2030.
A key part of fulfilling that mandate lies in how we assess learning.
For too long, education globally has been shaped by outdated, exam-centric systems that reward memorization over understanding and grades over growth. These systems fail to recognize and assess the full breadth of a student's ability. In particular, they do not measure critical thinking, creativity, leadership or adaptability in real-world scenarios — qualities essential for success in a world driven by rapid innovation.
This is not a new idea. Aristotle believed that the purpose of knowledge is action, not discourse. Einstein is credited with saying that knowledge is experience and everything else is just information. That wisdom remains strikingly relevant today. Yet our education systems often still fall short of preparing students to apply their knowledge meaningfully in life, work, and leadership.
In response, Misk Schools developed the Misk Schools Diploma, which has been validated by Cambridge University Press & Assessment. It extends assessment (ergo, learning) beyond rote exams, integrating rich evidence of holistic development as part of the final certification, through portfolios, interdisciplinary projects, internships, narrative feedback and structured self-evaluation. It is rigorous, yes, but also relevant, personalized, and aligned with the expectations of both top universities and the innovation economy.
This shift in assessment is already informing how our students engage with the world beyond school. We are collaborating with a number of Saudi Arabia's leading companies for our internship program and with higher education institutions such as Stanford University, where our students are engaging with the Human Perception Lab in the emerging field of symbiotics — a frontier science exploring how humans interact with intelligent systems. These partnerships exemplify how K–12 education needs to evolve, bringing high school students — with their untapped originality and technological ingenuity — closer to where research, industry, and higher education converge.
In order to garner broader input to the challenge of how to best evolve school assessment, I have authored a white paper on: Assessment 3.0: Aligning K–12 Education with Life Beyond School, which has been released through the Council of British International Schools.
The paper calls for an urgent realignment of how we define success in education. Relying exclusively on high-stakes testing doesn't just sort students; it shapes them. For learners less suited to time-pressured, performance-driven assessments, these systems can leave lasting scars — diminished confidence, disengagement and a reluctance to take risks or lead.
The paper argues that assessment should shift from exposing failure to nurturing potential. As another quote widely attributed to Einstein reminds us: 'If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.'
The full white paper is available here.