Choosing a New School? High-Quality Teachers Are the Answer!
“Rooms are a fixed size, which can’t be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who’s in them.”
Ah, the blessed Aidan, monk and author, philosopher and literary phenomenon of whom we may never have known had it not been for Jim Osborn. Jim Osborn was ‘the teacher who changed his life, the school’s Head of English.’ He was the man who led Aidan to love literature, though he never learned to love Math. His classroom did change, depending on who was in it. A place of drudgery –Math teacher –or a magical place –Jim Osborn.
It is like this in all schools –always has been and always will be. And this is how schools should be judged –how many of their rooms are inspiring, thrilling, engaging their occupants? How can we know?
We cannot! Is this not the most aggravating, annoying, enraging thing for those who need empirical data to judge the worth of anything? How can we possibly rank schools without data? How do we know what is good, what is effective, what is worthwhile, without data? How can we know if our education dollars are being well-spent without data? How can we formulate policy without data?
So, for many years, education jurisdictions throughout the world have sought to discern the links in learning between inputs and outcomes –and all have been thwarted by report after report that can find, if any, very few, and of the few, only one is constant.
The latest of these, published recently by Pearson and highlighted in The Economist is The Learning Curve. A comprehensive review and analysis of masses of education data from throughout the world concluded that:
Strong relationships are few between education inputs and outputs.
The research examined a wide range of education inputs, both quantitative – such as spending on pupils and class size – as well as qualitative – such as level of school choice. It also looked at numerous potential outcomes, ranging from inculcation of cognitive skills to GDP growth.A number of inputs show a statistical link over time with certain outputs, notably between income and results. The most striking result of the exercise is how few correlations there are. Education remains very much a black box in which inputs are turned into outputs in ways that are difficult to predict or quantify consistently.
Experts point out that simply pouring resources into a system is not enough: far more important are the processes which use these resources.
The report does, however, feel it safe to inform policymakers of five themes that emerge strongly. These are:
Five Lessons For Education Policymakers
1. There are no magic bullets: The small number of correlations found in the study shows the poverty of simplistic solutions. Throwing money at education by itself rarely produces results, and individual changes to education systems, however sensible, rarely do much on their own. Education requires long-term, coherent and focused system-wide attention to achieve improvement.
2. Respect teachers: Good teachers are essential to high-quality education. Finding and retaining them is not necessarily a question of high pay. Instead, teachers need to be treated as the valuable professionals they are, not as technicians in a huge, educational machine.
3. Culture can be changed: The cultural assumptions and values surrounding an education system do more to support or undermine it than the system can do on its own. Using the positive elements of this culture and, where necessary, seeking to change the negative ones, are important to promoting successful outcomes.
4. Parents are neither impediments to nor saviours of education: Parents want their children to have a good education; pressure from them for change should not be seen as a sign of hostility but as an indication of something possibly amiss in provision. On the other hand, parental input and choice do not constitute a panacea. Education systems should strive to keep parents informed and work with them.
5. Educate for the future, not just the present: Many of today’s job titles, and the skills needed to fill them, simply did not exist 20 years ago. Education systems need to consider what skills today’s students will need in future and teach accordingly.
And there it is again –the one constant, recurrent theme: teachers are more important than anything else and they should be respected. If there is money to spend, spend it on teachers. Let them have salaries to match their responsibilities; provide frequent opportunity for professional growth; give them ample resources; respect them like never before and listen to them more carefully, more closely, and more willingly than is currently the case.
Let us be rid of the ranks of those who govern and control our schools, people who want rooms that do not change, and repopulate them with those who want magicians like Jim Osborn in every room.
If they still doubt, let two great educational philosophers Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves disabuse them:
''When the classroom door is closed, the teacher will always remain in charge. Where students are concerned, the teacher will always be more powerful than the Principal, the President or the Prime Minister. Successful and sustainable improvement can therefore never be done to or even for teachers. It can only ever be achieved by and with them.”
We at Westside believe this. We have a carefully planned program of professional growth, designed to enable our teachers to become true, current experts in all aspects of their profession. In this time of COVID-19, rapid change is demanded of schools and how they deliver learning, so professional development for teachers is more important than ever. We know that it takes hard work and dedication to become a magician, but we make every effort to ensure we have one in each of our rooms!