Your teenager’s future boss might be an AI agent. Their career path will likely include jobs that don’t exist yet. They’ll need to navigate climate disruption, global competition, and technologies that make today’s ChatGPT look like a calculator.
So here’s the trillion-dollar question: Is their school preparing them for any of this?
Education entrepreneur Sunny Varkey just put $1 million behind finding the answer. His new Global Schools Prize — a sister prize to Varkey’s $1 million Global Teacher Prize — will reward institutions that are actually equipping students for the world they’ll inherit — not the one their parents grew up in. Ten category winners will receive $50,000 each, with one school taking home $500,000 to scale what works.
The categories tell you everything about what tomorrow demands: AI transformation, sustainability leadership, student wellbeing, and teacher development. These aren’t nice-to-haves anymore. They’re the difference between students who thrive in an agentic economy and those who get left behind. We need to figure out what works before an entire generation discovers their education was obsolete.
The Skills Gap Is Now a Chasm
Talk to any CEO, and they’ll tell you the same thing: new graduates aren’t ready. They can memorize facts that Google knows instantly. They can solve problems ChatGPT handles in seconds. But can they think critically about AI-generated content? Can they collaborate with both humans and machines? Can they adapt when their entire industry transforms overnight?
The schools competing for this prize are answering yes. They’re teaching students to work alongside AI, not compete with it. They’re building resilience and adaptability, not just test scores. They’re preparing young people for a world where the ability to learn continuously matters more than what you learned by age 18.
This is real. McKinsey estimates that 375 million workers globally will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 due to automation and AI. The World Economic Forum says 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025. These statistics are about the world that today’s middle schoolers will enter.
What Future-Ready Actually Looks Like
Forget the traditional metrics. The schools most likely to win this prize share the same DNA that professionals across disrupted industries will instantly recognize:
They treat AI as a tool, not a threat. Students learn to leverage technology for creative problem-solving, not just consume it passively. They understand how to prompt, verify, and build on AI outputs — skills that will define knowledge work for the next decade. These students are learning to think computationally while maintaining human judgment.
They emphasize human skills that AI can’t replicate. Critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity, and ethical reasoning. These schools know that as machines handle routine cognitive tasks, distinctly human capabilities become the premium. They’re building what some educators call “robot-proof” skills: the ability to work with ambiguity, to synthesize across disciplines, to lead with empathy.
They connect learning to real-world challenges. Whether it’s sustainability projects that impact their community or entrepreneurship programs that launch actual startups, these schools blur the line between education and application. Students aren’t preparing for life; they’re living it, solving real problems with real stakes.
They prioritize well-being alongside achievement, understanding that the mental health crisis among young people directly shapes their future success. Schools that build resilience and emotional regulation are preparing students for careers that will demand both. In a world of constant change, psychological flexibility becomes a core competency.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio and Your Family
If you’re a parent, this prize is a wake-up call. The school with the best test scores might not be the one best preparing your child for 2035. The questions you should be asking have changed: How is the school integrating AI and emerging technology into learning? What are they teaching about adaptability and continuous learning? How are they building resilience and mental well-being? Are students working on real problems or theoretical exercises?
If you’re an investor, pay attention. The schools that win will signal where education is heading — and where the opportunities lie. EdTech companies partnering with these institutions, platforms enabling their innovations, and the ecosystems forming around them represent the future of a $7 trillion global education market.
For employers, these prize-winning schools represent a future talent pipeline. Their graduates won’t need years of ramp-up — they’ll enter the workforce ready to work with AI, think systemically about sustainability, and sustain wellbeing under pressure. They’re being prepared for agility as much as ability.
The Innovation Imperative
This prize arrives as American education faces a perfect storm. Federal pandemic funding is expiring, leaving many districts with budget cuts approaching 8%. Meanwhile, the pace of technological change is accelerating exponentially. The gap between what students need and what schools provide is widening by the month.
But here’s what’s interesting: The Global Schools Prize points to a solution rooted less in funding and more in better thinking. The winners won’t be the wealthiest schools, but the ones that spotted the future early and moved quickly to adapt.
Schools encouraged to apply might be partnering directly with tech companies to access cutting-edge tools and real-world expertise. Others may be reimagining their curriculum around project-based learning and student agency. Still others could be finding creative funding solutions — from selling naming rights to signing advertising sponsorships that tap into community and alumni networks. Byron High School in Minnesota, for example, sold naming rights to its gymnasium to Scheels in a deal worth $12,000 a year. And in Missouri, the Parkway School District generated $1.3 million in its first three years of selling advertising contracts and sponsorships.
These are symptoms of entrepreneurial thinking that these schools are presumably teaching their students. They’re modeling the very adaptability and innovation they’re trying to instill.
The Competitive Reality
Competition is global now. Your child isn’t just competing with the kid next door for college admission or job opportunities. They’re competing with students from Singapore who’ve been coding since age seven, students from Finland who learn in completely reimagined educational systems, and students from India who are already building AI startups in high school.
The Global Schools Prize recognizes this reality. By identifying and scaling what works — whether it’s an AI integration model from Kenya or a wellbeing program from Korea — it’s accelerating the pace at which best practices spread globally.
The Defining Question
The Global Schools Prize is about whether the next generation will be equipped to thrive in a world being rebuilt by AI, reshaped by climate change, and redefined by technologies we’re only beginning to imagine.
That’s not just an education story. It’s an economic story, a technology story, and ultimately, a story about competitive advantage — both for our children and for the economy they’ll power.
The schools that win this prize show what true preparation looks like: cultivating students who can create the future rather than wait for it. In an agentic world where AI handles the routine and humans handle the exceptional, these schools are betting on human potential, properly developed.
The rest need to catch up. Fast. Because in a world where intelligence is becoming artificial, the quality of human thinking has never mattered more.