Key Themes for International Day of Education 2026:
- AI & Human Agency: Exploring how education keeps humans at the forefront of decision-making amidst rapid automation and technological change.
- Learning for Lasting Peace: Connecting education directly to fostering peace, reducing conflict, and achieving sustainable development goals.
- Youth Empowerment: Recognising students as active co-creators in shaping education systems for the future.
- Human Right & Public Good: Reaffirming education as a fundamental right and collective responsibility, especially for marginalised groups.
The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as the International Day of Education, in celebration of the power of education in shaping our world. This year's themes address critical global challenges, from ensuring equitable access to education in crisis situations to preparing learners for a technology driven world, all while reinforcing education's power to build resilient societies and break cycles of poverty.
Sabine Little, Professor of Literacy and Multilingualism, based in The School of Education said, “I am delighted that the International Day of Education recognises students as co-creators - students of all ages bring their own lived experiences, they bring unique knowledge, their home languages, and cultures to the table. In order to shape education systems for the future, we must learn from and with each other. With over a quarter of all children in England’s schools being multilingual, understanding these unique perspectives becomes ever more important, and a prerequisite for all children to live, work, and thrive in a global society.”
Professor Little has led a number of projects that focus specifically on multilingual learners. The project 'Growing up Multilingual with Chinese Heritage', with Dr Yue Zhou, worked with seven young co-researchers, and over 150 young people worldwide and in Sheffield, to understand how growing up multilingual shapes identity development. Collaborating with the School of Education’s Maker{Futures} team, the project 'Traditional Tales, Untraditionally Told' paired digital storytelling and maker pedagogies to facilitate multilingual children and their parents to tell their traditional stories multilingually in new and different ways, supporting both pupil agency and skills development in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Her award-winning work on creating a multilingual children’s library for Sheffield highlighted the importance of multilingual library provision, fostering a sense of belonging and social cohesion within the city.
Finally - since 2026 is also the National Year of Reading - the 'Rivers of Multilingual Reading' project highlights the unique ways in which multilingual children assign importance to their different reading sources, exploring how reading is aligned with a variety of emotional experiences. This work was adopted by World Book Day into its core activities last year, and a further collaboration is taking place this year.