Professor Sandra Milligan from the University of Melbourne and her fellow experts were inspired to write the report 'Future Proofing Students: What they need to know and how educators can assess and credential them' after noticing a disconnect between "what teachers want students to learn and how they are credentialed" or assessed.

The authors of the report also found that employers often knew little of what a student could really do based on a report card. Students, too, often complained that some credentials didn't reflect who they really were.

Education Review spoke to Milligan about this issue as well as the skills all students will require now and into the future. Depending on the context, these skills are called different things: soft skills, 21st century skills, general capabilities and graduate qualities.

They include teamwork and collaboration, communication in a range of forms, critical and creative thinking, and problem solving, to name a few. Milligan refers to them as "learning skills" as they are essential to the learning process.

Milligan also discussed the idea of a learner profile, which is allows educators to assess these credentials - or general capabilities in school language - in a more detailed way than a report. She's hoping this new way of assessing credentials gains traction but admits there are big challenges in going forward.