The inaugural Global Forum for Shaping a Better Future took place from April 7-9 in Singapore. A new annual convening, the Forum is organized by the Global Institute for Shaping a Better Future, an initiative of Teach For All that will be a center of global learning, evidence-generation, and leadership development for people around the world who are working to support classrooms, schools, and systems to develop all students holistically so that they can shape a better future. 

Designed to bring together education ecosystem leaders from around the world to connect and learn from each other, the Forum engaged nearly 200 attendees from across five continents including students, educators, researchers, civil society, government, and multilateral institutions, and philanthropists. All visionary leaders and changemakers in their own education contexts, the participants shared insights and innovations aimed at shifting the purpose and practices of education systems toward holistic student outcomes, and considered together the global agenda for strengthening these systems.

On April 7, the Forum opened with a keynote address by Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) who shared his thoughts on the global state of education and the investments and infrastructure needed to reshape our world's education systems. “Improving student outcomes requires not only great teachers,” he urged, “but ecosystems that enable leadership, collaboration, and innovation to thrive.”

Following the opening plenary, participants engaged in two days of interactive, immersive, and collaborative learning and discussion around three key thematic questions: 

• Purpose: How do we ground ourselves in the purpose of equipping students to shape a better future? 

• Practice: How do we transform our classrooms, systems and leadership in pursuit of this purpose? 

• Progress: How can we collaborate together to advance progress?

On the final evening of the Forum, attendees were joined by members of the International Education Funders Group and Singapore-based supporters, to celebrate the official launch of the Global Institute for Shaping a Better Future and welcomed Cheryl Fernando as its Director. The Global Institute is an initiative of Teach For All and aims to leverage its experience in engaging education practitioners from around the world in learning from each other about how to transform education. The Institute will be based in Singapore to leverage its status as a global hub for learning, collaboration, and scaling innovation. 

Subseqent to the 2025 inaugural convening, there is potential for the Global Forum to become an annual signature event of the Global Institute, providing an ongoing platform to surface, spread, and consider the implications of practitioner-generated insights from around the world about what it takes to shift the purpose and practice of education in classrooms, schools, and systems. 

The 2025 Global Forum was made possible through the generous support of the Arena Foundation, =DreamsAsia, the Asia Community Foundation, and Grab.