NORRAG Special Issue 09, edited by Hugh McLean, explores the redoubled emphasis on foundational learning, and the framing of “relevance” as standing in tension with basic literacy and numeracy, that has emerged at this midway point to Agenda 2030. How do we think about foundational learning in ways that really make sense in 2024, in the world we see around us? Ideas about what is foundational in education have always resided in contested terrain. The current debate, on the surface, perhaps, tends to polarise around those who believe foundational learning should involve only literacy and numeracy and those who believe it must involve other foundational skills and content as well. In reality, the debate is as complex as it is crucial: it reflects financing decisions and constraints, policy priorities and planning within education systems; it embraces many encompassing questions about the purposes of education and the nature of the social compacts we construct to deliver equity and quality in education; it is fundamentally about pedagogy and how pedagogy is understood.