Self evaluation using the quality indicators from How Good is Our School? has become the norm for teachers and leaders in Scottish schools. It is quite usual to hear to talk about the quality of education in terms of the 1 to 6 scale from unsatisfactory to excellent.
An important questions is, however, are we using the right QIs? Teachers tend to "teach to the test". This is not a criticism. We all tend to focus on how our performance is measured. One of the good things about the QIs in HGIOS is that they are not all quantitative measures. There are far too many systems of measures which seek to reduce everything to a set of numbers. There are many out there who reckon that you should be able to apply a numerical quantity to just about anything in life.
Before you think that this post is going to be another dull and boring discussion of how we measure the quality of education let me stop you. The reason for this post is because of a report I heard on the radio this morning. It was about the new king of Bhutan. Bhutan is a small landlocked state in South Asia. The king of Bhutan coined the term gross national happiness in an attempt to measure the quality of life. This was the bit that got me. I have no idea how we might measure gross national happiness. It does sound, however, as though it might be worth trying.
We measure what we value. What does that say about our education system? End of course exams that measure a brain dump of content? Is it worth a thought?
Thursday, November 06, 2008
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2 comments:
Apparently according to radio 4 he also waited until the court astronomers told him that the coronation was cosmically right. Could schools apply the same criteria to ofsted inspections ie they only happened when the planets aligned ?
I have to take ever so slight issue with your remarks about quantitative measures here. Although not the be all and end all, they are a useful measure of the impact of many educational initiatives, particularly when looking at best value for money spent - cost-benefit analysis. Coming from the big bad world of business management, I have to admit to have spent years, by necessity, focussing on these kinds of measures, but with regard to raising attainment using GLOW/ICT, it has been useful to be able to conduct a quantitative study which measures such gains to evaluate how cost effective GLOW actually is. It has been useful in persuading other colleagues to 'opt in' to GLOW as well. I do think that, whilst not the be all and end all, there is a big place for quantitative measurement in education. We veer too much towards qualitative and therefore, subjective measures perhaps almost as a justification for doing things we know are perhaps less efficient, buit more enjoyable. There has to be a balance I think.
As too gross national happiness, lets not measure it, in whatever way, in months with less than a 10 hour average daylight length !
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