Posted on behalf of Michael Stevenson, vice president of Global Education, Cisco It’s no good teaching 21st century skills and then testing students on traditional facts and knowledge. During the Learning and Technology World Forum in London this week, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft called upon educational leaders, governments and other companies to work together to transform education, and to concentrate especially on the problem of assessment.The three companies have brought together OECD and some of the world’s leading experts to devise a new approach to assessment. We hope that through this collaboration we will enable countries around the world to use ICT to assess their students’ competence in 21st century skills by 2012.In so many countries today, the talk is of economic transformation. But the only way these transformations can happen is if the education systems are fixed first. In fact, all around the world, people are struggling with the age-old problem of improving education standards quickly and at scale.The key is to make sure students leave school with the skill sets they need to succeed in the 21st-Century economy: problem-solving, team-working and critical thinking are the ones most people name first. But this is a tall order for governments to achieve alone. It really requires a long-term, collaborative commitment from the public and private sector. We look forward to being a part of this process.