An education is a wonderful thing
Every year in the UK 16-year-olds study for their General Certificates of Education (G.C.S.E’s.). And every year the the Government publishes the results. This is how they have changed:
I did my GCSE’s (or something similar) in 1984. I am an old (and as you can extrapolate from the chart) poorly educated man.
Or am I?
Has the quality of education changed?
Every year there are headlines over the pass marks:
- Major slump in top-grade passes revealed (2013)
- Fewer pupils gaining five good grades (2012)
- Rise in top grades boosts GCSE record (2010)
There is always an argument. Are students getting cleverer? Is teaching getting better? Are politicians manipulating the numbers? Are the exams getting easier? Are we investing enough in education?
The reputations of both teachers and politicians can be made or destroyed by these pass marks.
Do they really matter?
What is the purpose of an education? Is it to:
- Prepare students for a useful life?
- Develop social and moral responsibility?
- Allow personal growth and self-improvement?
I have no idea, but I’d hazard a guess that it isn’t to make the numbers go up on that chart.
I’d also hazard a guess that for some teachers (and many politicians) the grades they get are far more important than they would care to admit.
Are exam grades an exercise in improving education or self justification?
Is the focus on an internal measure or an external reality?
The problem is not just confined to education
Here are some operational measures:
- Service level – the percentage of items completed within a given time
- Cost per unit – the cost incurred to do something
- Quality R.A.G. – the rating of items against an internal standard
- Tasks completed – the number of things accomplished
- Performance score – how well your staff did
- Customer satisfaction – the proportion of customers who say they are happy
I bet you use something very similar.
We have lots of these measures. We manage our businesses by them. We set targets, assign bonuses, argue about bench marks, they are all important.
But there is a problem with them. They are all focused on what is going on within the organisation, not outside it.
Who really cares?
Do your customers care if you hit a performance distribution curve or handle 90% of your outstanding tasks in 5 working days? Is a 2.5% rise in your voice of the customer score a sign of a successful business that can’t possibly fail?
Perhaps there is an opportunity to look at what the reality is for your customers, instead of being blinded by your internal scores.
There is a difference between having a vision and suffering from a hallucination ~Peter Scholtes
If you enjoyed this post click here to have the next delivered straight to your inbox
Read another opinion
Image by non-partizan
James,
I think you hit the nail on the head when you asked ‘ what’s the purpose of education?’ I think we could apply the same approach to both internal and external scores…….what’s their purpose? And, who do they benefit?
Adrian
Who indeed
Hello James,
You raise an excellent point. As I have had three young one’s in school I can tell you that the focus of the teachers and the headmasters is on the grades. It is not on the contribution made by the school on the lives of those who attend the school.
You ask what is the purpose of education? If we go back to the introduction of education (reading and writing) in England then the answer is clear: turn manual agricultural hands into labour fit to work in a factory. That shift required some ability to read and write – especially for the folks who were going to act as foreman. Then it was to get young folks fit to work in the office – do clerical work. Today? Is it there to make the folks in Government look good – at least not bad?
When I look at the whole Customer thing I notice the tremendous struggle folks have to shift from the inside out perspective (CRM) towards the outside in perspective (the Customer’s experience). To such an extent that many folks are practicing CRM in the guise of Customer Experience.
Here is what has hit me. The modern human being is self-centred – both from a design perspective and this is reinforced by our culture. Me. Me. Me! So it is tremendously difficult for you/i/us to step outside of self and truly be present to and attend to the other. This is exemplified by the problem almost all of us face in truly listening to the other. Even the word ‘other’ says it all – it says not me, not that important.. Given this, our metrics tend to be me/internal focused.
All the best
maz
And our obsession on me makes life worse for everyone. You only need to look at the procession of 4X4’s dropping their children off at a school near you to see “Me” in action.
I wonder if we will ever learn