Simon Lightman

Thinking and practising education for a changing world

We are living through a convergence of crises that unsettle not only our institutions, but also our assumptions about who we are and how we live together. Ecological breakdown, democratic fragility, and epistemic instability are not simply external problems awaiting technical solutions; they raise deeper questions about meaning, responsibility, and relation.

My work begins from the conviction that education is one of the primary sites where these questions are lived, not only through what is taught, but through how learning shapes attention, agency, and ways of being in the world.

I work in and alongside schools, civic institutions, and public conversations, exploring how education might move beyond adaptation toward transformation. This involves rethinking curriculum, leadership, youth agency, and sustainability as practices of becoming rather than as programmes to be delivered.

Alongside teaching and writing in public, I undertake a small number of independent advisory engagements each year.