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Value is perhaps one of the most subjective societal constructs, yet it’s the one we try to ascribe the most objectivity to. Something that we describe as valuable surely must have an economic label attached to it, detailing the ‘value’, and if we can’t do that then we describe it as ‘invaluable’.

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s waste is another’s treasure. We don’t have to agree on what we each find valuable, and we don’t always have to convert it into currency to make it count.

The other day, I was talking with my son about his favourite number. It’s a very large number (1,000,000) and, when asked why, it’s because he wants to stare at the shiny coins. The value wasn’t in the number, it was in the coins - regardless of denomination - as long as they were shiny. We could achieve the same value with pennies rather than pounds, even though pennies have very little economic value.

Even from that pile of pennies, measurably small in economic terms, sprouts immeasurable educational value: counting, exchanging, comparing, even exploring different countries if the coins come from abroad. That kind of learning can expand into a deeper curiosity about the world. From the humble penny to a gateway into geography, economics, and empathy. That is real value. But how much? Invaluable.

Not because it cannot be measured, but because trying to measure it would miss the point. I could track the impact of this moment over time, attempt to quantify future benefit, perhaps build a forecast model. But doing so would cheapen the moment itself. It would reduce the joy of shared discovery to a line item on a business case. And that’s the irony: attempting to assign a number to something intangible often devalues the very thing we’re trying to elevate.

This leaves me in a tricky position. As a data professional, I live in a world that demands value demonstration, ideally with ROI. And for some things, that’s entirely appropriate. Tangible assets like data products should have clear, economic value ascribed to them.

But broader initiatives: teaching people how to use data; fostering a data culture; applying governance - these live in the realm of intangible value. These are the pennies that build empires. And yet we’re told to measure them anyway.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime… or starts a fisheries business and eats more than just fish.

Teaching people how to use data is more than training them on tools. Tool training is a skill, and it’s relatively easy. Teaching what data is telling you, why it’s telling you that, what to do with that information takes knowledge. Real knowledge. And real knowledge isn’t portable. It’s rooted in the context of an organisation, as well as the wider political and socioeconomic situation.

Stephen Bush, writing in the Financial Times, makes this point brilliantly: a knowledge-rich curriculum prepares us not just for today’s tasks, but for tomorrow’s disruptions, AI among them, by giving us broad, foundational frameworks we can apply to novel problems.

So how much is a good education worth? How much is it worth to raise someone’s capacity to think, to inquire, to connect, to understand?

More than can be measured. It is invaluable.