Edu-ca-tion Fast For-ward (EFF), an orga-ni-za-tion, spon-sored jointly by Promethean and Cisco, that brings together lead-ing global experts and change agents from the world of edu-ca-tion to dis-cuss 'the top-ics that mat-ter most', wants to begin to change that by bring-ing together some artic-u-late and intel-li-gent voices from the world's youth to dis-cuss issues that are rel-e-vant to young peo-ple them-selves and to their edu-ca-tion.

In July 2012, in the most recent of the five debates orga-nized by EFF to date, a group of elo-quent and youth-ful voices debated the topic 'From Learner Voice to Global Peace'. The young peo-ple were located all across the globe and came together pri-mar-ily through the won-der of Telep-res-ence (TP), a high-definition video con-fer-enc-ing tech-nol-ogy. The dis-cus-sion that day was not only intel-li-gent and thought-ful: it was truly inspir-ing for every-one involved.

The full debate can be watched and lis-tened to on Promethean Planet.
And now, on the 28th of Jan-u-ary 2013, dur-ing the annual Edu-ca-tion World Forum, to be held in Lon-don, another group of excep-tional young peo-ple (includ-ing some of the voices from EFF5) will come together through the magic of TP to talk about'From Learner Voice to Emerg-ing Lead-ers'. Those of us involved in EFF have some hopes and expec-ta-tions of what might come out of the event, but we are also highly aware that there must be a gen-uine space in amongst our pre-sump-tions for the hopes and expec-ta-tions of the young peo-ple them-selves to come to the fore dur-ing and beyond the dis-cus-sion.

The pri-mary aim is twofold:

• bring the voice of youth to the policy-makers' table, to let the young peo-ple hear some views on the big issues, and to let them debate them openly and fully
• to bring the policy-makers to the learn-ers' table so that they have to face up to the issues that are crit-i-cal to the learn-ers before they make their pol-icy decisions

Issues such as the struc-ture of the cur-ricu-lum, how edu-ca-tion is deliv-ered (includ-ing dif-fer-ences in this across the world), the rel-e-vance of edu-ca-tion to their lives, how we might encour-age real change in the rela-tion-ships between peo-ple in edu-ca-tion sys-tems, seek-ing to realise the extra-or-di-nary value that can be sought by tack-ling education's chal-lenges with peo-ple rather than doing it to them. We need all pol-icy mak-ers to take on board the knowl-edge that they are mak-ing deci-sions now that will affect the gen-er-a-tion ahead, and per-haps more than one gen-er-a-tion ahead.

And all of this will be hap-pen-ing across a truly inter-na-tional matrix of con-nec-tions, cross-ing coun-tries, cul-tures, and com-mu-ni-ties. I will be blog-ging again in the New Year with details of the date and time, and with infor-ma-tion about the key speak-ers, young and not-so-young, who will be lead-ing the discussion.