The SDG era is closing soon. On the eve of the UN General Debate, we’re shifting the question from whether education must change to what the world’s learners must now be prepared for.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic no longer describe the floor of what a young person needs to know in order to participate fully in civic and economic life. Information ecosystems reward manipulation, and AI is becoming the default environment for work and learning rather than a supplemental tool. And the hardest problems ahead—climate, health, migration, governance—will not yield to single-discipline thinking. The capabilities that matter most now are civic, digital, scientific, and systems-level, but the institutions that teach them have not caught up yet.

The Education Futures Forum opens Day One of Diplomatic Courier’s UNGA 81 Dialogues, convening education ministers, EdTech founders, and multilateral leaders over a working lunch to define the New Foundational Literacies that younger generations will need to navigate and lead our world, as well as what it will take to finance and deliver them at scale.