Productive Schools

Inputs, outputs and why they are important

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The Australian, in anticipation of the upcoming federal election, wants us to consider productivity. This is not a term on most people’s lips but it is upstream of the issues we care about, such as wages and the cost of living. It is not something people in the education sector are familiar with considering and it shows. No doubt, some educationalists, if they stumble across this post at all, will dismiss it as a grotesque example of neoliberalism. How could such a dry, technical word as ‘productivity’ apply to the wonderful diversity that children represent and the educational mission of becoming more human?

Productivity is a term used by economists. Economics is all about human behaviour. It has plenty to say about schools. When I taught economics for a period last year, I began to realise how some of these terms I was vaguely familiar with from the news media have a direct relationship to the education project.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, productivity is essentially a ratio of outputs to inputs. The greater the output per unit of input, the greater the productivity. Economists will measure this in dollars—dollars out divided by dollars in. However, when we think of the work of schools, part of the problem is in identifying what these outputs are. Another part of the problem is that any attempt to put these outputs into dollar figures necessarily involves inferring a long chain of cause-and-effect. Essentially, nobody knows the dollar value of increasing the Australian population’s proficiency in algebra by a certain amount, although economists, if asked, will try to estimate it.

Growing numbers of inputs

Australia has an education productivity issue just like all other sectors of the Australian economy. I am no economist, but I have observed changes in schools over the years that reflect trends in the wider economy. Teaching and schools are far more regulated than they were 25 years ago. Child protection standards are, thankfully, higher. Industrial protections are stronger. Work is also more rigorously policed. If you made an unwanted pass at someone at the Christmas party in 1997, the consequence would be embarrassment. Now, it would likely be a breach of rules on appropriate workplace behaviour and a complaint and investigation could follow. Accordingly, there is a lot more human resources work to be done.

Perhaps paradoxically, there has been a corresponding shift in teachers’ views of the workplace. People expect personal fulfilment from work. It is less of a job you go to each day to earn money—with your centre of gravity being elsewhere in your family and outside interests—and more an expression of your identity, with employers assuming a more paternalistic role. Employers are seen as having a key duty to promote mental health and wellbeing, while removing sources of friction and anxiety. They may give employees access to an Employee Assistance Program that offers counselling services and other professional advice. This corresponds with a far greater awareness of mental health issues and neurodiversity than in previous decades.

Technology has also increased pressure on inputs. A quarter of a century ago, teachers did not have to spend time sorting through 50+ emails as part of their work day, reading, ignoring, deleting and responding as needed. Technology can have negative impacts on productivity as well as positive ones.

Then there are the inefficient ways that teachers traditionally work.

A zoo of outputs

Even more so than with staff, the purpose of schools has expanded when it comes to students. I have already mentioned increased duties around child safety, but it goes far beyond that. A shift in parenting, facilitated by technologies such as email, has led to more engagement and intervention in the everyday life of schools. Sometimes this is about addressing important issues such as bullying. At other times, it seems more like ongoing intervention in the normal ebb and flow of student relationships. Occasionally, it can be a wholly negative source of tension and stress.

Some might claim the main purpose of schools is ensuring young people are healthy, happy and form good relationships. If that’s your view and you believe academic achievement is secondary to this, then you will disagree with the argument I make below.

Others are interested in academic outcomes but are confused about them. They think we should teach teach critical thinking or creativity and they see these goals as being at odds with the traditional curriculum. They are not. Both build on having lots of relevant subject knowledge and skills to think and be creative with. Yes, it is possible to just teach lots of information without asking students to think critically about it and so this needs to be built into the plan for the gradual release of control from teacher to student. Traditionally, I think this has always been the aim if not always the practice.

And then there are the requests for schools to solve society’s problems by teaching about whatever is making the news this week. At its worst, these look like lessons where teachers explain that knives are dangerous and drugs are illegal i.e. something the students are already ten steps ahead of. At other times, we will be asked to teach, say, basic ‘financial literacy’ so young people understand about credit cards and mortgages. Fair enough, but the component of this that is not maths can be taught in a couple of lessons. It’s the maths that’s key and we probably need to worry a little more about that.

Regulation and culture

I am not sure what can be done about regulatory burdens. Some seem necessary, like those around child safety, whereas others seem less necessary. The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA), the education regulator here in Victoria, does seem to be particularly burdensome and I know, anecdotally, of someone who would like to open a school here who has not managed to do so yet due to its byzantine requirements.

The expanding role of work in people’s emotional lives, coupled with the additional regulation of that work, seems like a cultural issue. I am not sure we have that balance right but I may be looking at this from an outdated perspective.

What I do know is that there are huge efficiencies to be had in the planning, teaching and learning of academic concepts that will both reduce the inputs and increase these specific outputs.

Efficient teaching inputs

The most obvious example is well known in Australian education circles due to the work of The Grattan Institute. Traditionally, teachers plan their own lessons. They may draw on varying levels of resources to do this but the plan remains their responsibility and is often a key accountability measure. In some schools, managers ask to review these plans and provide feedback.

This cottage industry way of working is supported by an ideology promoted in university teacher training departments: Teaching is all about relationships; students are all different; teachers need to plan to the students in front of them; teaching needs to be creative for teachers to be fulfilled and so on.

The reality is that students are not so different that a really good way of introducing Year 7s to linear functions in Sunshine is not going to be a really good way of introducing them in Gympie. The Grattan Institute spotted this inefficiency and calculated that centrally created lesson plans could save teachers three hours per week which is compensation enough for most of us to relinquish some creativity. I think that figure is conservative.

To work, however, central plans need to be ready to use. As soon as you start introducing additional teacher guides and cross referencing with separate booklets to look up this or that or, worse, links to online resources, they lose most of their value. Everything needs to be in one place and good to go.

And those plans need to reflect efficient teaching strategies. We have a tradition of neglecting this aspect of our work. Romanticism has been a strong influence on education and talk of ‘efficiency’ is seen as cold and lacking in humanity. And yet students are in school for a finite amount of time and we should look to make best use of that time. It is unethical not to do so.

Why do maths students at my school do so well on measures such as NAPLAN, Australia’s suite of standardised literacy and numeracy assessments? By teaching efficiently, they not only learn more mathematics, more quickly, but it frees up time for practising that maths. This happens so smoothly that if you ask one of our middle school students what they learned in maths on a given day, they will probably say, ‘not much’.

What does this look like? As I tweeted a few days ago, when I get the opportunity to teach maths:

“I model an example, often asking students to do the stages of it they can already do on their mini whiteboards. Then they do an example exactly like the one I’ve done with different numbers. Then I vary it and model a different variation. Then we repeat. I might model two problems side-by-side with the same deep structure but different surface features. When I set independent work, they have already completed many examples along with me. We constantly cycle back, doing problems from a lesson, a week, a month ago, gradually varying the contexts and exposing them to more and more transfer.”

There is more to say but it’s not complicated, it’s just highly structured with frequent feedback so that errors can be corrected quickly. If you want to learn more then this researchED talk by my former colleague, Caiti Wade, is a good place to start.

I am not experienced at teaching English, but I do know the traditional approach to teaching writing is flawed and inefficient. This is where, after some instruction on the themes and maybe a little joint planning, students independently produce an extended piece of writing. It then falls to the teacher, as penance, to spend hours and hours writing repetitive comments on each piece of work. Often, the martyrdom of marking becomes an integral part of a teacher’s identity.

Again, a structured approach is more efficient. This will include more shared writing of smaller chunks, such as sentences and then paragraphs. Extended pieces are the culminating step of these smaller intermediate ones. Rather than writing comments on each essay, whole class feedback followed by some self- or peer-assessment and perhaps a little redrafting is more efficient and ensures the feedback is acted upon.

It’s no coincidence that the examples I have used from maths and writing are examples of the application of procedural knowledge—what we often call ‘skills’. There is still work to be done in the most efficient way of teaching more content heavy subjects or subject areas. I predict narrative has a role here, alongside making content knowledge more procedural in its introduction.

Culture clash

Seeking efficiencies to make education more productive is an entirely rational goal. Pleasingly, we already know of ways to do this. The problem arises that this whole approach is entirely antithetical to the largely romantic culture of education. Anyone who wants to pursue increased productivity at the level of public policy, rather than one school at a time, will need to be prepared for a sustained backlash from the education establishment and will need a plan for circumventing their interests.