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By Shahid Qureshi
EDUCATION is not a mechanical system or a manufacturing process where we could design an algorithm, automate a set of standardised operations involved and expect the quantity and quality of products on predictable lines. The fact is that education is a man-made system, an organic process which is more or less based on the principles of agriculture. The analogy intends to elucidate that there are conditions under which learners thrive and conditions under which they don’t. Therefore, the culture in which students and teachers work is of foremost significance among many factors which determine the quality of education and its outcome.
Culture is an organic term. While the concept of quality is constantly evolving, some universal benchmarks of ‘quality education’ include ability to think critically, creatively and the application of knowledge and skills to meet real life challenges. It is imperative that the foundations of an education system be laid on the principles that create and support conditions under which children learn in an effortless and seamless fashion.
Many countries around the world have established their global reputation as the ‘best education systems’ of the world and have come to be frequently accepted as reference models in global policy discourses as educational stars for other countries to emulate.
For instance, since 2011 education reforms, Canada has emerged as an educational leader in international assessment rankings. A enviable story of the Canadian system has been its capacity to integrate large immigrant students into the system with the same performance outcomes as native Canadians.
Similarly, the success of Singapore’s `Teach less, learn more’ campaign together with the ‘Thinking schools and learning nations’ as well as the model of recruitment and retention of professionally competent teachers has raised Singapore to being one of the top performing education systems in the world.
Finland’s education system too, which is widely acknowledged as one of the best systems in the world, climbed up the global ranking ladder in tandem with evidence-based reforms based on what has the greatest impact on teaching and learning. Finland regularly comes out at the top in science, maths and reading in PISA rankings. Finland’s strong focus on personalised learning, school autonomy and a de-cluttered curriculum, has given students, teachers and flexibility to progress academically and professionally.
Quite noticeably, what all these high performing systems in the world be it Singapore, Canada, Finland or Shanghai do is not available in many other countries including India.
If we look closely, there are many shared features of these successful educational systems. The first is that these systems individualise teaching and learning. Personalised education is premised on the recognition of uniqueness of each child and the refutation of a one-size- fits-all approach. As children have unique biographies, the system has to engage with their individuality. These systems have a very broad approach to education with a very broad and diverse curriculum which offers much flexibility of choice to individual learners.
The third important feature of these systems is that they attribute a very high status to the teaching profession. This makes teaching a highly attractive career choice for talented people. No education system in the world can be better than its teachers. We can’t improve education if we don’t get talented people to teach, give them constant support, encouragement, appreciation and professional development.
Top-performing countries take two different approaches to ensuring well-trained teachers. In Finland and Canada, the training is ‘front-loaded’ and teaching is an attractive profession. In Singapore, Japan and Shanghai, teachers are expected to improve throughout their career, and are assessed against teacher standards or descriptions.
Yet another feature of these systems is that they devolve responsibility to school levels. Educational institutions operate with a great deal of autonomy. A system based on trust that relies on professional expertise of teachers as against control through the top-down directives from federal or provincial governments. The system recognises that education doesn’t occur in the meeting halls of the policymakers. It is transacted in classrooms. Its actual players are the teachers and the students.
Any system that snatches the discretion from teachers and students, stops working. It is vital to put this autonomy back to the people on the spot. Contrary to these models, in most systems elsewhere, federal or provincial governments decide and dictate both curricular and operational aspects of academic business.
Such systems also put less emphasis on standardised assessments. These encourage learners to come up with their own solutions to problems based on personalised curriculum. The high performing systems offer inspiration and guidelines to us. Policy makers back home can make inferences from practices of the successful systems and test their applicability within our context.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
- The author is an educator by profession
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