Like other parts of society, the education system has responded to the shutdown crisis of COVID-19 better and more nimbly than could have been imagined. It might even be, as Monash University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner suggests, that grades have improved during the crisis.

That’s an encouraging sign. For, says the chief provocateur at The Australian Financial Review’s Reshaping Australia Dialogue yesterday, MIT’s Sanjay Sarma, the crisis may mark a fundamental break on how so much of society and the world works.