The (relatively) simple formula for successful school systems

The OECD commissioned a report from McKinsey & Company on successful school systems and the report was published in 2007: How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top . The report concludes that there are three unremarkable things that high performing systems do consistently:

1. They get the right people to become teachers (the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers).
2. They develop these people into effective instructors (the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction).
3. They put in place systems and targeted support to ensure that every child is able to benefit from excellent instruction (the only way for the system to ready the highests performance is to raise the standard of every student).

The top systems include England, Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Boston, Japan. The report is very readable and basically hopeful because the answer is not just money or extraordinary leadership, but consistency and determination focused on some basiclly straightforward targets. Take teacher quality for example. The report says that all but one of the top systems filter teacher training applicants before University, and then again on entry to the profession. They achieve this in part by restricting the number of teacher training places, which raises the standard of those accepted. They set beginning salaries a little higher, and flatten later salary rises. Most low performing systems have relatively open admission to teacher training, consequent lowering of standards, then there are many graduates for each teaching position, leading to a generally low morale and status for teacher preparation. There is more to it than these measures, but a few smart policy measures have a large impact and, the report claims, prove that the calibre of graduate teachers can be significantly improved at little net increase in cost.

The top performing systems invest great effort in developing their human capital, creating a culture of permanent review and improvement, focused on student performance, for which teachers and schools are accountable. The major point here is that developing human capital is the goal and accountability measures are one of the means to achieve this. Not the other way around. The McKinsey report makes a key point regarding improvement under the heading:

"NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT
Top-performing systems are relentless in their focus on improving the quality of instruction in their classrooms. Yet this focus on instruction, though a necessary condition, is in itself insufficient to bring about improvement. In order to improve instructing, school systems need to find ways to change fundamentally what happens in the classrooms. At the level of individual teachers, this implies getting three things to happen:

• Individual teachers need to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practice. In most cases, this not only involves building an awareness of what they do but the mindset underlying it.
• Individual teachers need to gain understanding of specific best practices. In general, this can only be achieved through the demonstration of such practices in an authentic setting.
• Individual teachers need to be motivated to make the necessary improvements. In general, this requires a deeper change in motivation that cannot be achieved through changing material incentives. Such changes come about when teachers have high expectations, a shared sense of purpose, and above all, a collective belief in their common ability to make a difference to the education of the children they serve."

It is difficult to imagine how these can be achieved without a 'learning community' approach to professional learning. This is an environment where teachers can safely consider 'weakensses is their own practice', test things in 'authentic settings' and find 'a shared sense of purpose'.

A dominant message from this report is that top systems are overwhelmingly consistent. Everything fits together aiming at the three ingredients: teacher quality, instructional focus, everyone learns.