Current Positions

John Abbott has been the Director of the British not-for-profit Trust Education 2000 - now known as The 21st Century Learning Initiative (UK) - since 1985. In January 1996 he began an initial two-year secondment in Washington DC to establish The 21st Century Learning Initiative and he is currently serving as its President.

The Initiative is a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit Foundation in the United States dedicated to exploring new understandings about the brain, human intelligence and human memory in order to better understand human learning and how it can be further facilitated by communities around the world. These new understandings are coming out of cognitive science, neurology, evolutionary biology/psychology, cultural anthropology (even from archaeology), as well as pedagogy, conventional psychology and systems theory.

In this John Abbott has been working with 60 world class researchers, educational innovators, thinkers, business leaders and policy-makers from 12 countries in developing a Synthesis of all these concepts and ideas that can be used by policy-makers and community leaders to extend the learning agenda beyond the walls of the school.

In December 1998 the Initiative issued a Policy Paper on the strategic and resource implications of a new model of learning. Since its establishment in 1997 the Initiative's website has been continuously expanded and is now used by people from, on average, over fifty countries a month. (www.21learn.org) Plans are currently being developed for an international Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Learning and Community Development.

Educational and Professional History

John Abbott was educated at St. John's School, Leatherhead, and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded a four year "leaving scholarship" from his old school in 1960 towards the cost of university education. At University he founded the School's Hebridean Society to send expeditions of high school students to live on the uninhabited islands of the Hebrides during extended periods of the summer holidays; he won first prize for his paper to the Irish Universities Geographical Congress in 1963; he graduated with a Bachelors Degree in 1964, and was invited to undertake an MSC Research Degree, whilst also reading for a Higher Diploma in Education which was awarded with Honours (Second Class) in 1965. In 1964 he was elected Secretary of the University's Student Research Common Room. In 1969 he was awarded his Master's Degree, and in the same year was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

He started his teaching career at Manchester Grammar School in 1965 (at the time the most highly selective grammar school in the UK) where he taught Geography and Religious Studies, and was for a time Director of the school's half million pound appeal (1968-69). As teacher he led expeditions of high school students to Turkey (1966), and to Iran (1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, and 1975) to study agriculture and the life of the Nomads. He became Deputy Chairman of the Young Explorers' Trust (1977) and Chairman of the Expedition Advisory Centre of the Royal Geographical Society (1978-80).

In 1974 he became Headmaster of the 430 year old Alleyne's School in Stevenage (and was responsible for taking this from being a grammar school into being a comprehensive school), and was thought at the time to be the youngest high school headmaster in the UK. While headmaster he introduced what was to become Britain's first fully computerised classroom and was chosen to represent secondary education on The Engineering Council, and sat on a special Committee to advise the British Government on the role of information technology in schools.

He was much instrumental in 1981 in the setting up of the New Technological and Vocational Educational Initiative, funded fully by the British Government at a total cost of some 700 million over a five year period. In 1984 he undertook a nine month feasibility study into the nature of a curriculum for secondary education appropriate to the needs of the 21st century. This position took him throughout the United States and Western Europe, and introduced him to an international array of educational issues and leaders.

In 1985 Mr. Abbott became Director of the Education 2000 Trust which was funded largely by industry and private sponsors to develop ever more appropriate techniques and environments that would enable young people to have confidence in their ability to become life-long learners. He was responsible for setting up nine community-wide projects aimed at creating true "learning communities," and was instrumental in attracting some £8 million of private sponsorship to these projects over an 11-year period. He achieved considerable acclaim when he was invited to be the Keynote Speaker to the Annual Conference of the prestigious Confederation of British Industry in 1987. He has been involved in three separate meetings to discuss educational issues at the Policy Unit at Number 10 Downing Street in London.

As Director for Education 2000, and President of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, John Abbott has travelled widely and spoken at numerous educational, business, and international Conferences throughout the UK, North and South America, Southern Africa, Europe, Japan, and Indonesia.

He currently gives some sixty lectures a year, including in 1999 being the keynote speaker at the prestigious North of England Education Conference, the Canadian Education Association, The State of the World Forum, and the USAID (Education) annual conference in Washington DC. In 1993 he served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, and as a consultant to the United States Agency for International Development. In 1997 he was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev to join the State of the World Forum.

Publications

John Abbott's latest book is "The Child is Father of the Man: How Human Learn and Why" (Jan 2000). He had published three earlier books entitled The Earth's Changing Surface (1976); The Iranians: How they live and work (1977); and Learning Makes Sense: recreating education for a changing future (1994). He and Terence Ryan, the Senior Researcher at the Initiative are currently writing a further book with the working title of "The Unfinished Revolution".

Additionally, Mr Abbott has published numerous newspaper and magazine articles both in the United States and the United Kingdom, the most recent being by Educational Leadership (November 1999 - as well as earlier articles in 1994 and 1997), Education Canada, Journal on Learning and Evaluation (Tokyo, July 1997), "Information Technology and the Comprehensive Ideal" in Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal (London, June 1997), Educational Digest (September 1997), The Parliamentary Monitor, and The School Administrator (January, 1998).

Personal Information

Mr. Abbott is married with three sons aged 24, 21, and 20. He is also a master woodcarver.