McKinsey and Company Report

I was re-reading the executive summary of the McKinsey Report for reference.  This study was done to find out why some schools succeed where others do not.  Specifically, they studied 20 of the world’s school systems, including ten of the top performers on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which tests student’s in math, reading and science aptitudes.

I mentioned some of the findings at our first staff meeting.  I would like to share some of their findings for your digestion.

FINDINGS

The experiences of these top school systems suggests three things that matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.  This is irrespective of the culture in which they are applied as well.

Ontario and Alberta (Canada) students were in the top 10 with Australia, Belgium, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

·        Reducing class size from 23 to 15 students improves the performance of an average student by 8 percentile points at best

·        A study in Dallas shows that the performance gap between students assigned three effective teachers in a row, and those assigned three ineffective teachers in a row was 49 percentile points

·        The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction through professional development

·        High performing school systems help teachers improve instruction, create awareness of weaknesses in their practice, provide them with a precise knowledge of best practice, and motivate them to make the necessary improvements i.e. mentoring, coaching, collaboration, principal’s as instructional leaders  

·        Being a teacher is about helping children to learn; being a principal is about helping adults to learn

·        The PISA scores of the top performing systems show a low correlation between outcomes and the home background of the individual student

·        All of the top-performing and rapidly improving systems have curriculum standards which set clear and high expectations for what students should achieve

·        All of the top-performing systems recognize that they cannot improve what they do not measure

Our school and system are in the intervention stage called great to excellent.

Great to excellent: the interventions of this stage move the locus of improvement from the center to the schools themselves; the focus is on introducing peer-based learning through schoolbased and system-wide interaction, as well as supporting system-sponsored innovation and experimentation

The McKinsey Report has been downloaded below for your reference.

http://ssomckinsey.darbyfilms.com/reports/schools/How-the-Worlds-Most-Improved-School-Systems-Keep-Getting-Better_Download-version_Final.pdf

Thank you for reading.  I am looking forward to your comments.