Future Problem Solvers Make National Semifinals

In October our senior (Year 11-13) Future Problem Solving team made the national semifinals, narrowly missing out on a place as one of the top five teams in the country to contest the national finals. The team consisted of Hamish Annan, Iain Miller, David Ju and Scott Cameron. Their booklet was described as “superb” but unfortunately one mistake cost them a place in the finals.

Future Problem Solving (also known as Global Issues Problem Solving) is an intellectually challenging activity undertaken in a team environment. It involves working through a future scenario that is a global issue using a six-step process to come up with an action plan to solve the problem. The steps are: Identify 16 challenges; Identify the underlying problem; Identify 16 possible solutions to the underlying problem; Develop 5 criteria to assess the 8 best solutions; Choose the 8 best solutions and assess them against the criteria; Turn the best solution into a detailed action plan to solve the problem. This must all be done in two hours on a problem that has never been sighted before and no access is allowed to anything other than a dictionary or thesaurus to assist the team. The global issue for qualification for the nationals was “Water Quality”. 

Graeme Miller

Future Problem Solving team coach