Ed Fidoe

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Expertise: Interdisciplinary Education and Thinking

Ed Fidoe

Ed Fidoe is leading the creation of a new university, The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) for those who want to shape the world, not just fit in. They are cultivating a new style of problem solver graduate.

The Times announced it’s launch in 2019 with the front page headline “Polymaths wanted at Britain’s first new university in 40 years”. It will have a radical new learning model organised entirely around complex problems that matter to society, like knife crime and climate change.

Ed is a regular conference speaker about future workforce needs, how to select talent and innovative forms of teaching.

His vision for education is for a system of life long learning that is more interdisciplinary and more focused on the complex world we live in and solving the problems which evolve within it.

He encourages us to stop worrying about ’21st Century skills’ and focus on teaching superpowers that have been vital since time began. In 2012 he co-founded School 21, which builds oracy, craftsmanship, grit and spark into the curriculum and helps young people create beautiful work that has an impact on their community.

Ed is a member of the McKinsey & Co. alumni advisory board in the UK, and he has advised the leaders of some of the UK’s top educational institutions including Cambridge University, the London School of Economics and Eton College.

He has an interdisciplinary past, with a background in Engineering and theatre production, as well as starring in the Emmy Award winning children’s TV show Woof! as a child.

In 2015 Ed Fidoe was number 14 on Richard Branson’s list of “Inspirational People who put others first.

As someone who left school at 15, I believe that education needs rethinking and that schools should be more relevant to what’s going on in the real world. I was therefore impressed to hear about School 21 at our latest Virgin Disruptors debate, the Future of Education: does our current education system make the grade. School 21 co-founder Ed Fidoe told us about the system that challenges the status quo to pioneer new ways of teaching, which break away from tradition to put student’s needs first. Thank you Ed and the team at School 21. – Richard Branson – Virgin