Educational Initiatives Blog

What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey

Every country tries to put down the best plans and policies to improve the standard of education. But we find that there are big variations in the education standards between countries. The findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have shown that the best performing countries in education continue to perform better: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

Our View:Though the findings seem “obvious” when one reads the report, clearly most countries around the world are failing to get the best people into the teaching profession (the 1st step in creating better school systems). As the report points out, teaching is not really a high paying profession even in the countries where the top 33% percentile of the population is choosing teaching careers. What these countries seem to be doing is to provide social recognition and a good working environment for teachers, while maintaining reasonable salaries. Thus it is a matter of pride to be a primary school teacher in Korea and not easy to become one.

We believe similar steps in India, which lead to teaching becoming a “profession of choice” can have a huge impact. Certainly, salaries should be improved where necessary, but equally or more importantly, the stature of the profession needs to get the respect due to it. There are a few things which might help to achieve this (many of these ideas have been discussed in different forums before)-

1) Establish premier “Indian Institutes of Education” like the IITs/ IIMs, with stringent entrance requirements.

2) Launch a public awareness campaign about teachers and the teaching profession

3) Like the “Teach for America” corps in the US, create a system where top graduates can spend 2 years teaching in government schools, at the government salaries. A few might choose to continue- and the many who go on to corporate jobs would at least be sensitized to issues in education.

We are sure there would be more ideas on how to get the best people into teaching, if we were to discuss this.

The leading consulting organization, McKinsey, has given policy recommendations based on the findings of PISA. They tried to find out the common factors between the successful countries. According to McKinsey, schools need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of the teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. These don’t sound like the most ‘innovative’ ideas but if taken seriously they would change education radically.

Hiring the best teachers is the first step. One South Korean official says, “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” Studies have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to the best teachers, they end up in the top 10% of student performers. In Finland, all new teachers must have a master’s degree. South Korea recruits teachers from the top 5% of the graduates. Primary school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities, and getting admission requires top grades.

Teacher training is also a crucial factor determining the quality of education. Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others’ classrooms and plan lessons together. In Finland, they get an afternoon off a week for this. In Boston schedules are arranged so that those who teach the same subject have free classes together for common planning. This helps spread good ideas around.

The other common thing between top performing countries is the intervention they provide for students who lag behind or start failing. Finland has more special-education teachers devoted to laggards than anyone else-as many as one teacher in seven in some schools. Singapore provides extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay behind-often for hours-after school to help students. .

None of this is rocket science. Yet it goes against some of the unspoken assumptions of education policy. Scratch a teacher or an administrator (or a parent), and you often hear that it is impossible to get the best teachers without paying big salaries. But McKinsey’s conclusions seem more optimistic and are based on research findings: getting good teachers depends on how you select and train them; teaching can become a career choice for top graduates without paying a fortune; and that, with the right policies, schools and pupils are not doomed to lag behind..

To read the full article you can visit the below link. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9989914

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9989914

Our View

Though the findings seem “obvious” when one reads the report, clearly most countries around the world are failing to get the best people into the teaching profession (the 1st step in creating better school systems). As the report points out, teaching is not really a high paying profession even in the countries where the top 33% percentile of the population is choosing teaching careers. What these countries seem to be doing is to provide social recognition and a good working environment for teachers, while maintaining reasonable salaries. Thus it is a matter of pride to be a primary school teacher in Korea and not easy to become one.

We believe similar steps in India, which lead to teaching becoming a “profession of choice” can have a huge impact. Certainly, salaries should be improved where necessary, but equally or more importantly, the stature of the profession needs to get the respect due to it. There are a few things which might help to achieve this (many of these ideas have been discussed in different forums before)-

1) Establish premier “Indian Institutes of Education” like the IITs/ IIMs, with stringent entrance requirements.

2) Launch a public awareness campaign about teachers and the teaching profession

3) Like the “Teach for America” corps in the US, create a system where top graduates can spend 2 years teaching in government schools, at the government salaries. A few might choose to continue- and the many who go on to corporate jobs would at least be sensitized to issues in education.

We are sure there would be more ideas on how to get the best people into teaching, if we were to discuss this.

Tags: assessment, education, lessons, McKinsey, students