Why ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough: the quest for excellence in schools

SSAT Celebratory DinnerMarch 2009

Dylan Wiliam

www.dylanwiliam.net

Raising achievement mattersFor individuals Increased lifetime salary Improved healthLonger life

For societyLower criminal justice costsLower health-care costs Increased economic growth

Why are employers unhappy?Children are more intelligent than they have ever beenThe ‘Flynn’ effect: long-term rises in IQ

Teaching is better than it has ever beenEspecially in state schools (according to PISA data)

It’s the changing nature of work…Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the work-place most rapidly?

1. Routine manual

2. Non-routine manual

3. Routine cognitive

4. Complex communication

5. Expert thinking/problem-solving

The ‘technology bias’ of change…

Autor, Levy & Murnane, 2003

…produces greater rewards for skill.

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1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005

Dropout

HS Diploma

Some College

BA/BSc

Prof Degree

Successful education…The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach.

(Sir Richard Livingstone, 1941)

The only 21st century skillSo the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

(Papert, 1998)

Where’s the solution?Structure

Small secondary schools Larger secondary schools

Alignment Curriculum reform Textbook replacement

Governance Specialist schools Academies

Technology Computers Interactive white-boards

School effectivenessThree generations of school effectiveness researchRaw results approaches

Different schools get different results Conclusion: Schools make a difference

Demographic-based approaches Demographic factors account for most of the variation Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference

Value-added approaches School-level differences in value-added are relatively small Classroom-level differences in value-added are large Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

Increasing teacher qualityA labor force issue with 2 (non-exclusive) solutionsReplace existing teachers with better ones?

Important, but very slow, and of limited impact Teach First Gradually raising the bar for entry to teaching

Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers The “love the one you’re with” strategy It can be done

Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter Even when they’re hard to do

Senning Transitional Switch

Early death rateSenning 12%Transitional 25% Bull, et al (2000). BMJ, 320, 1168-1173.

Improvements in pediatric cardiac surgery

Life expectancy:Senning: 46.6 yearsSwitch: 62.6 years

Impact on life expectancy

“Always make new mistakes”Esther Dyson

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”Samuel Beckett� Worstward Ho

“In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have.”

Lee Iacocca