The 13 most innovative schools in the world

Ørestad Gymnasium is one giant classroom, where more than 1,100 high school students spend half their time learning in an expansive glass cube — a "gymnasium," as parts of Europe still call secondary schools — to avoid traditional instruction.

By encouraging students to collaborate in wide-open settings, the school hopes kids will be equipped to think flexibly on diverse topics later in life.

"We want to have teaching where the students make research and work together in solving real problems," headmaster Allan Kjær Andersen tells Tech Insider. "So we want to be an open school that is in connection with the outside world."

The open spaces, which are adorned with equally spacious "drums" for a more relaxed learning environment, encourage students to assume an active role in their own education. Kids break off into groups and form makeshift classrooms, sometimes with teachers to guide them. Movable walls and bookshelves create more intimate learning settings.

"It's not enough to give them knowledge, you also have to give them a way of transforming knowledge into action," Andersen says. "And that's very important for us, and I think it is important for modern schools."

The Egalia school system is founded on total equality between students. The system is made up of two schools, Egalia and Nicolaigården, which reject gender-based pronouns in the hopes of grooming kids to think of one another on equal terms.

Instead of "he" and "she," kids are either called by their first names or referred to as "they." It's part of a mission to avoid discrimination of all kinds.

"That [includes] gender, religion, age, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability," Headmaster Lotta Rajalin tells Tech Insider. "This approach is imbued in every aspect of our day to day work with the children as well as in how we interact with the parents and each other."

Kids learn to judge each other on their actions, not stereotypes.

"It is important that the children learn the basis of democracy both in practice and theory in order to be good world citizens who do not discriminate," Rajalin says. "A good self-belief is the basis for learning and development."

Designed by Finnish architecture firm Rudanko + Kankkunen, the all-ages Cambodian school was built by community members, for community members, to learn how to turn their passions into full-fledged businesses. A local NGO provides teachers to guide students on that path.

Building the school was a lesson in itself, as architects created the structure side by side with local residents, giving them pointers on how to construct similarly styled buildings on their own.

The school allows families to gain independence, Rudanko + Kankkunen explain. Rather than toil away in low-paying jobs, men, women, and children can learn the ins and outs of pricing their homemade goods and selling them to people in their area.

When it's not in use as a school, the building serves as a town hall for democratic decision making and community meetings.

Like its namesake suggests, the Steve Jobs school rejects the conventional wisdom in full: Instead of corralling kids through the same educational system, they go at their own pace.

Maurice de Hond, the school's founder, tells Tech Insider that each student begins with an Individual Development Plan (IDP), which is evaluated and readjusted every six weeks by the child, his or her parents, and the coach. (The school doesn't call them "teachers.")

"Based on the outcome of the IDP," de Hond says, "the child is offered new personal learning challenges and instruction moments to choose from."

All students in the 4th to 12th grade school receive iPads fully loaded with apps to guide individualized learning. The goal is to get kids designing their own education.

"In a Steve Jobs School," de Hond says, "no child is an exception as every child works at its own pace."

The Carpe Diem school look more like an office building than a classroom.

Inside the main room, known as The Learning Center, there are 300 cubicles (one for each student). These cubes house a computer that guides the student through his or her education.

"We personalize education," Carpe Diem CEO Dr. Robert Sommers tells Tech Insider. "We start by understanding the student and then adapt our work to meet their needs to succeed." If students have trouble with their online learning, they can turn to instructors for help.

It's a model that has paid off big time in the handful of Carpe Diem schools, which go from grades 3 to 12, across the US.

Carpe Diem-Yuma, in Arizona, outperformed every public school in the county on the Arizona Instrument for Measuring Standards (AIMS) test four years in a row. Average proficiency was 65%. Meanwhile, Carpe Diem's was 92%.

In Indianapolis, kids are increasing their reading levels by the equivalent of three years in just one year's time.

"Every student is different," Sommers says. "Yet we need to get them all prepared for life after school. Adjusting to their needs allows students to be more successful. We judge our success on our students success."

Creativity is king at Blue School, which was founded as a playgroup in 2006 by the Blue Man Group. Sensing a gap in how schools operated, the group strove to bring its quirkiness and love of inquiry into education.

As part of the curriculum, kids in grades 2 to 8 come up with ways to improve recycling, create 3D models of New York City, and fix home appliances. They gain an intimacy with real-world problems that few kids are exposed to in learning their times tables with flash cards.

Its system of "dynamic learning" ranges from age 2 to grade 8. No matter their age, kids are taught that creating and implementing novel ideas is a critical set of skills.

"Studies show that fostering and explicitly teaching social and intellectual skills in school results in the adaptable thinkers, collaborative problem solvers, and irrepressible innovators that an unknowable and quickly changing world demands," Blue School officials tell Tech Insider.