Education is not a business

A reader sent me this link a while back. Some students were forced to write letters of apology to their teachers for scoring below 85 marks in a maths exam. The principal justified the teacher's action and told Lianhe Wanbao that the purpose of the letters was to make the students reflect, and encourage them to improve their performance.

In a way, this post is long overdue - my thoughts on this topic date all the way back a decade or so when I was working at a local polytechnic, then a university. Most universities are run like businesses or at least pseudo-businesses. At the polytechnic, the Principal gave himself the title of CEO and he unabashedly said that running a polytechnic was akin to running a business.

I have fewer problems with this concept at the higher education level as these institutions have to be at least partially self-funding. However, it perturbs me to learn that more and more primary and secondary schools are also turning towards this direction.

These days, teachers are ranked against each other measured by KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). If their students don't perform up to par, then they drop in ranking. I assume this affects their appraisal and promotion prospects. Principals are also under pressure to keep up in school rankings (and not just in academics), hence they push their teachers to achieve better results.

Here's what happens when schools are run like businesses. Teachers become workers assessed and ranked according to quantifiable output. The principal is like the CEO, answerable to a higher authority based on numbers. Students become products, they are valued only according to the quantifiable output they can contribute, everything else is peripheral or redundant. Everything is reduced to numbers.

Therein lies the problem. When you run a business, the focus has to be on results. And preferably quantifiable results. Don't get me wrong, I think it's well and good to try and assess the effectiveness of a school. Afterall, we don't want ineffective schools and teachers.

But instead of seeing how we can better assess the effectiveness of schools, we run the schools to make them easier to assess. Do you see the difference? One tries to find the means to an end, the other changes the end to suit the means.

Education administrators love this because it's so neat, structured and orderly. But the problem is education is about moulding of individuals. And neither individuals nor learning is neat, structured or orderly. The process of education is not and should be like that of manufacturing, taking place in a factory.

If we take this route, there is no "business" value in helping a student overcome his learning disability or giving special attention to a child from a difficult family background because the outcome is not quantifiable. We're leaving it to the assumed social conscience of the teacher and the school to step forward in such instances. But realistically, ensuring A students continue to get top grades will likely get priority because it directly impacts on the teacher's KPIs.

There are so many problems with this model and it has frustrated me to no end that the authorities cannot seem to see it. I attribute this to the world's obsession with numbers. A degree in Finance or Economics is considered wow, so valuable. There's just something so finite and secure about numbers, we think they can't lie. But anyone who believes in the unquestioned objectivity of numbers is, well, to put it bluntly, an idiot. Numbers can be so easily manipulated or massaged to suit your own interests. Remember the financial crisis?

Financial people seem obsessed with reducing everything to numbers. I remember at the university, the Finance department implemented a financial IT system which made everyone crazy because it was so rigid it wouldn't allow for variations in anything. Basically, it suited nobody except the Finance guys because it enabled them to compute everything in neat, quantifiable categories. Instead of adjusting the system to cater to variations, they insisted that all departments adjust their output to fit within the given categories.

Using the same analogy, we need to adjust the means to suit the end, not the other way around. Education is not a business. It causes schools to ask kids who don't perform to transfer out; schools to focus on adding to their medal tally instead of character building; students to gauge their own self-worth by the marks on their exams; teachers to ask underperforming students to write apology notes.

Let's bring the focus of education back to its original goal - educating.

Moving towards real learning in secondary school

I've always hated looking at my kids' primary school time-tables. It seems to me that the school is trying to cram in as much syllabus and content as possible within a finite number of hours. Simply looking at the subjects squeezed into intensive half-hour blocks makes me feel ready to hyerventilate. Non-core subjects like PE look like they're thrown in as afterthoughts and if that's not bad enough, these are often being usurped to make time for even more lessons. It's one big drill.

I was expecting Lesley-Anne's secondary school time-table to be much of the same, if not worse, particularly as new subjects are being introduced at the secondary school level. Much to my surprise, academic subjects take up just about two-thirds of curriculum time in her time-table. The rest of it is filled with non-academic modules. Apart from the usual art, music and PE, there are (or will be) other interesting periods such as research, IT, culture, even drama and dance. I was struck by how holistic and diverse it was. It certainly had a leisurely feel about it, a complete contrast from primary school.

Naturally it didn't take me long to figure out that reduced curriculum time means that the students are expected to do much of the learning on their own. For instance, with only one history period a week, there is only so much content the teacher can cover. The students are clearly expected to do their own reading and find their own information to supplement their learning, no spoon-feeding of content. With just two weeks of school under their belt (one, if you discount orientation week), the kids have already been handed out written assignments requiring research and reflection.

Fortunately for Lesley-Anne, she is familiar with these independent learning techniques, thanks to the GEP as its curriculum centres around such methods. Since p4, she has learned how to embark on research, how to organise and execute both team and individual projects, as well as how to use a variety of IT tools.

And I feel strongly that this is what learning should be about - not drilling of content but exposure to a wide variety of topics and intellectual exploration through guided and self-discovery.

Everyday, Lesley-Anne comes home from school all chirpy and eager to share some fun or interesting moment in school. I can see that she's engaged and interested, and that makes learning even more effective.

It's early days yet and of course I can't speak for all secondary schools, only Lesley-Anne's, but here's my verdict so far: I absolutely like what I see. Check with me again in a year's time to see if I've changed my mind!

The comedy routine of sports trials

One of the first things many secondary schools put their newbie sec 1 kids through are sports trials. These often take place during the first week of school or orientation, as the various sports attempt to identify and recruit potential players for the school teams.

The sports trials at Lesley-Anne's school were held last week and every sec 1 student had to undergo them. Basically, they had to try out at the sports stations to see if they would be shortlisted. The advantage is that you get to try out for a ton of different sports, many of which the kids probably would never have experienced before. The downside is that many of these kids, as I discovered, are decidedly unsporty and having to undergo one sports trial after another must be nothing short of torture.

Lesley-Anne was recounting what happened and it was just hilarious. Sports ranks lowly on her range of interests and it appears that she's not the only one. They had to shoot hoops for netball and basketball, do leaps for wushu, run sprints, do a long distance run, flip an opponent for judo, do catches for volleyball, among other tests. The kids huffed and puffed. They complained about how heavy the short putt ball was. For gym, they had to jump on a trampoline and many bounced awkwardly in circles before falling off.

The seniors would call out, "Who's interested in basketball?" *silence* "Who's keen on volleyball?" *crickets chirping* Finally they said in desperation, "You can't ALL be interested in the performing arts, right??"

When Lesley-Anne told me that she recorded one of the fastest times in her class for sprints, I figured her classmates were no Flo-Jos. Then I discovered she was even shortlisted for softball.

"Wah, maybe you got hidden talent! Did you hit the ball very well?"

"Err... the first time I hit the stand. The second time the ball bounced off."

I thought maybe it's just her school with the sports duds, until Elan shared similar stories of the sports trials in her son's school. According to her son, the standards for the trials fluctuated, ie as the coaches got more desperate, the standards got lower. By the time it came to her son's class which was the last one, he got selected for softball even though he didn't know what the sport was, as well as soccer even though he knocked down half the cones he was supposed to dribble around!

The wushu test initially was to squat with one leg in front and one extended behind, then jump up and kick until your leg is parallel to your cheek. By the time the last class did it, the test became: "see how high you can jump".

Thanks for allowing me to share, Elan. I laughed until my sides ached. No wonder schools nowadays are putting more focus on sports DSAs. If they had to rely on all these bookworms with two left feet, the schools ain't entering the Sports Hall of Fame anytime soon.

Reporting day

23rd December 2009 - a momentous day. Bright and early, Lesley-Anne joined hundreds of other students in a variety of uniforms, to report to her secondary school.

As we sat with other parents in the hall, watching our young 'uns with pride, it seemed like there was an invisible thread binding us together in our shared circumstances. Lilian wrote about feeling a great sense of school spirit when she was with Brian at his secondary school and I totally understand what she meant.

Everything was hustle and bustle today, the school had obviously gotten the system down pat through years of experience. Registration was efficient and orderly, followed by the massive rush to buy uniforms, books and stationery. The stiff crispness of unworn fabric and the woody scent of new books - they all added to the excitement in the air. Eager faces unjaded by familiarity, a brand new campus waiting to be discovered and fresh routines to be carved out. I'd forgotten how exhilarating it was to embark on a new chapter in school.

What wondrous adventures lie ahead? Nobody knows... but we can't wait.