What can skiers from Norway teach us about education?
Year 2 parents evening and once again I was reminded about how the school system is set up for people like us.
We hear nothing but praise. She works hard, excellent reader, a pleasure to teach. We flick through the maths and literacy books and see page after page of neat work with ticks and smiley faces all over it.
About half the parents in my daughter's class will be having a similar experience. Generally (and there are some exceptions) we are all people who did reasonably well at school, not straight A grades and Oxbridge degrees but A-levels and degrees. The types who make up most of the white collar professionals in this country. And the types who decide how the education system should work.
I then think of all my friends and relatives and their children. And the only ones who aren't having similar experiences are the handful who have a child with additional needs.
We, and our children, are stuck in this positive feedback loop where our children are hitting the targets, getting praised, enjoying school (not all the time), constantly getting valued for being bright. Their work is on display in reception, they are the ones on the school council, the ones winning the school spelling bee.
As the parents we get reflected glory.
In economics this is called a positive feedback loop. The praise received motivates you more, your work improves, you receive more praise and you carry on in this cycle.
Then I think of the other 50% of parents in the class. The ones whose children have had exactly the same classroom time, and been present in the same lessons, yet who aren't thriving.
Even the best of our schools, the ones that have amazing outcomes for disadvantaged pupils still have this issue. Look at the absolute best primaries in the country (as measured by progress), which make amazing gains in reading/writing/maths and focus on their low prior achievement pupils.
Despite their astonishingly high progress scores for low prior achievers their middle achievers accelerate away during KS2, and despite the huge progress, only 18% of the low prior attainers pass all their KS2 exams.
So if even the absolute best Primary school in the country can get 18% of low priors (most other schools I looked at had 0% so again I must stress 18% is astounding progress) what happens when these pupils reach secondary school? With extraordinary effort they might grab a handful of low grade GCSE passes, but given these are norm referenced, someone entering secondary school in the bottom 25% of achievers are very, very unlikely to.
Given my earlier point that the people making the rules are those who experienced the positive feedback loop all through their own schooling, and will likely do so through their children's is this system going to change?
So what to do about it? Well this is where I feel strongly that schools can learn from sport. Particularly from Norway's Winter Olympics team, currently enjoying their most successful Winter Olympics ever and topping the medal table.
Their philosophy has been participation not competition.
By stressing sport as a public good, something that is worthwhile for the sake of doing it, rather than a means to an end (becoming a professional athlete) more people are taking part. I think everyone would agree that education is a public good.
However they also recognised that competition has a negative impact on participation. The negative feedback loop of coming last and feeling humiliated makes people not want to participate*. So they simply scrapped high stakes competition. No scores kept, instead of "all must have trophies" it became nobody gets trophies. It is a bit of fun for the sake of fun. If the fun element is retained, participation increases, people spend longer doing it because they are enjoying it and improve at it. Motivation shifts from external validation to intrinsic enjoyment.
And for Norway this is working.
* just about everyone I saw surveyed recently on my timeline about what they hated at school mentioned humiliation (usually in PE) as being the key factor. Welcome to the world of the bottom 20% everyday at school.
So could schools do this? If we moved from the model of coercion (You will do this, you will be ranked, failure will be highlighted, success will be praised) to one of encouraging participation (this is good to know, try your best, go off on tangents if the interest is there)
Would the bottom 50% get more out of school without the threat of humiliation and the negative feedback loop that entails?
Would the top 50% actually get more out of it in a more relaxed environment?
Would more teachers stay in the profession if they weren't judged on short term data but trusted by society to deliver an educated population?
As the Norway team manager says:
"Our aim isn't to have the best 10 year old athletes in the world, but the most mature adults"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/winter-olympics-2018/2018/02/18/norway-dominating-2018-winter-olympics-medal-count/350369002/
We hear nothing but praise. She works hard, excellent reader, a pleasure to teach. We flick through the maths and literacy books and see page after page of neat work with ticks and smiley faces all over it.
About half the parents in my daughter's class will be having a similar experience. Generally (and there are some exceptions) we are all people who did reasonably well at school, not straight A grades and Oxbridge degrees but A-levels and degrees. The types who make up most of the white collar professionals in this country. And the types who decide how the education system should work.
I then think of all my friends and relatives and their children. And the only ones who aren't having similar experiences are the handful who have a child with additional needs.
We, and our children, are stuck in this positive feedback loop where our children are hitting the targets, getting praised, enjoying school (not all the time), constantly getting valued for being bright. Their work is on display in reception, they are the ones on the school council, the ones winning the school spelling bee.
As the parents we get reflected glory.
In economics this is called a positive feedback loop. The praise received motivates you more, your work improves, you receive more praise and you carry on in this cycle.
Then I think of the other 50% of parents in the class. The ones whose children have had exactly the same classroom time, and been present in the same lessons, yet who aren't thriving.
Even the best of our schools, the ones that have amazing outcomes for disadvantaged pupils still have this issue. Look at the absolute best primaries in the country (as measured by progress), which make amazing gains in reading/writing/maths and focus on their low prior achievement pupils.
Despite their astonishingly high progress scores for low prior achievers their middle achievers accelerate away during KS2, and despite the huge progress, only 18% of the low prior attainers pass all their KS2 exams.
So if even the absolute best Primary school in the country can get 18% of low priors (most other schools I looked at had 0% so again I must stress 18% is astounding progress) what happens when these pupils reach secondary school? With extraordinary effort they might grab a handful of low grade GCSE passes, but given these are norm referenced, someone entering secondary school in the bottom 25% of achievers are very, very unlikely to.
Given my earlier point that the people making the rules are those who experienced the positive feedback loop all through their own schooling, and will likely do so through their children's is this system going to change?
So what to do about it? Well this is where I feel strongly that schools can learn from sport. Particularly from Norway's Winter Olympics team, currently enjoying their most successful Winter Olympics ever and topping the medal table.
Their philosophy has been participation not competition.
By stressing sport as a public good, something that is worthwhile for the sake of doing it, rather than a means to an end (becoming a professional athlete) more people are taking part. I think everyone would agree that education is a public good.
However they also recognised that competition has a negative impact on participation. The negative feedback loop of coming last and feeling humiliated makes people not want to participate*. So they simply scrapped high stakes competition. No scores kept, instead of "all must have trophies" it became nobody gets trophies. It is a bit of fun for the sake of fun. If the fun element is retained, participation increases, people spend longer doing it because they are enjoying it and improve at it. Motivation shifts from external validation to intrinsic enjoyment.
And for Norway this is working.
* just about everyone I saw surveyed recently on my timeline about what they hated at school mentioned humiliation (usually in PE) as being the key factor. Welcome to the world of the bottom 20% everyday at school.
So could schools do this? If we moved from the model of coercion (You will do this, you will be ranked, failure will be highlighted, success will be praised) to one of encouraging participation (this is good to know, try your best, go off on tangents if the interest is there)
Would the bottom 50% get more out of school without the threat of humiliation and the negative feedback loop that entails?
Would the top 50% actually get more out of it in a more relaxed environment?
Would more teachers stay in the profession if they weren't judged on short term data but trusted by society to deliver an educated population?
As the Norway team manager says:
"Our aim isn't to have the best 10 year old athletes in the world, but the most mature adults"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/winter-olympics-2018/2018/02/18/norway-dominating-2018-winter-olympics-medal-count/350369002/
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