Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, recently formed a committee to investigate the crisis in teaching, where shortages are occurring because teachers are resigning. This problem was highlighted at the recent conference of federal and state education ministers held in August.Their classic quick fix for the teacher shortage was to put successful and intelligent but unqualified teachers into classrooms. I certainly hope that the Minister for Health does not use the same solution to overcome the shortages of doctors and nurses in operating theatres and hospital wards.
The problems in education are not caused by poor teaching, they are caused because the education system is broken. There are several reasons for this breakdown but it is largely due to the massive imbalance in education spending on high and low achieving schools and the over use of accountability measures and data collection.
Gonski’s recommendations were received by government in 2010. The major recommendation was to spend more money on needy, low achieving schools. What happened? In the decade since 2012, politicians at state and federal level have increased funding on independent school five fold in comparison to government schools.
In 2009, NAPLAN, a universal assessment programme, at huge expense, replaced perfectly adequate random sampling assessment schemes. At the same time. teachers and principals have been bogged down in data collection and accountability procedures that deflect them from their main focus...teaching the child sitting at the desk. Politicians, policy makers and bureaucrats should all remember that if their policies do not improve the performance of the child sitting at the desk then nothing in education will change. Not for the better, at any rate.
It was Einstein who said that not everything that can be counted matters and not everything that matters can be counted. He also said that we cannot hope to solve the problems of the present by employing the solutions that gave rise to those problems in the first place. Wise words indeed but who is paying any attention to them?
I first wrote a blog article about education as a broken system in June 2013. Almost ten years ago. NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming Since then, nearly 200 000 people have read that blog story. Obviously, none of them were in a position to do anything about fixing the system.
If we can agree that the system is broken then we should pay some attention to a man who was the father of effective and valid random sampling instead of testing each and every product. That same man was a systems analyst. His advice saved huge corporations billions of dollars. His name was Professor Deming, (1900-1993) a professor of mathematics. Professor Deming was invited to Japan in 1950 by General MacArthur to assist in that country's first democratic election after World War 2.
While there, Deming was approached by Japanese industrialists asking if could advise them on how to improve their products, which at that time were regarded as poor quality and often referred to internationally as “Mickey Mouse” products.
Deming studied Japanese industrial production and then gave the industrialists his 14 Point Plan which he said would make them internationally competitive. He said it would take them five years.
The Japanese did it in four, by which time US car dealers were stunned to find that their American customers preferred to wait until the better made Japanese cars arrived in their showrooms, already well stocked with cars manufactured in Detroit.
Deming believed if the system worked effectively, the product would be of good quality and the workers would be happy in their work. As a teacher and principal I always believed that a school was a place where children came to have fun with their friends and their teachers while acquiring the knowledge, skill and habits that would enable to live happily in the environment in which they lived. The problem with teaching today seems to me to be that teachers have lost the joy of teaching. Sad!
Deming found the Japanese workers were burdened with excessive accountability measures, causing stress and loss of job satisfaction. Exactly the conditions that are causing good teachers today to resign or take early retirement.
I will list just six of Deming’s fourteen points. If the Federal Minister’s special committee can persuade him to apply these to the education system then many of the problems would dissolve.
No 3: Cease dependence on inspection to achieve
quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspections by building quality into
the product in the first place.
No 6: Institute training on the job.
No 8: Drive
out fear and build trust so that everyone can work more effectively.
No 10:Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets
asking for zero defects or new levels of productivity…the causes of low quality
and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the
work force.
No: 11 Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas
and management objectives. Substitute leadership!
No 12:Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work. This means abolishing the annual rating or merit system that ranks people and creates competition and conflict.
I am sure the Federal Minister and all teachers would agree that:-
* we need to drive out fear and build trust in our schools and in our teachers.
*we need to eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets calling for zero defects because low quality outcomes are generally the fault of the system, not the teacher.
*Number 11 is a beauty. Cut out the Administrivia…substitute real leadership.
*We must remove the many data gathering processes and procedures that rob teachers of the joy of teaching. That is why so many are leaving the profession.
Let us hope that in ten years time they are not calling for more committees to solve the crisis in education. After all, Professor Deming gave us the solution over seventy years ago.
