The Edu-survey to end all Edu-surveys

Review to inform a Better and Fairer Education System - Consultation

(Image from: Quora)

On public education day, I’ve just sat down to complete the: Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System Consultation - Department of Education, Australian Government - Truly an ideological gold mine. 

Did I expect it to be a rather straightforward exercise?. No. Did I expect it to be this crazy? Not at all. 

The survey is asking: what works in education? 

Which is a silly question. As Dylan Wiliam says also, within education we must stop people doing good things, so they can do great things.

Expecting an aggregate survey of a pre-defined series of drop-down boxes is truly bizarre - It falls into the classic trap, we are asking you, but we’ve also framed the questions in a way that will return the expected results. 

The results is choosing between a range of equally good options, and weighing up which is most bestest. Or, more tellingly, which is the most expensive to furnish. An open-box question asked:

What things help improve educational outcomes, my response: 

Time to collaborate with peers

Time to research

Time to reflect

Time to learn

Trust in educators

Empowerment of educators

Which of these are easy to furnish? Well none, not a single one. All are costly, deep, root and branch changes, and so they should be. You don’t stick your head out of a burning building and ask for better stairs. 

Another juicy example was:

Thinking about the following education outcomes, which three outcomes are the most important for Australia’s education system to invest in the next five years?

Please select up to three selections

Student engagement

Educator health and wellbeing

Educator support and retention

Teaching quality

Student academic performance

Student health and wellbeing

Help students who are falling behind, especially those experiencing disadvantage

Classroom behaviour

Which is the image for this blog. Which one of these people should we shoot? Which darling should we kill? The answer is, well, none of them. Don’t make me choose! They are all important, obviously! 

I would lean towards teacher-centric stuff, because that will flow on to others, but students are important also, of course, as is good teaching, as is classroom behaviour, as is helping students experiencing disadvantage. So it’s like an impossible question and a rather silly riddle, as a result.

Here’s the final one:

Thinking about the school you work in and your own experience, where should the government invest funding to improve student outcomes in your school?

Please select up to three selections

More administration/education support personnel

Resourcing curriculum implementation

Small group tutoring or individual tutoring to help children who fall behind

Off the shelf, adaptable lesson plans

Better school equipment and infrastructure

Improved access to health and other services to help overcome barriers to learning

More teachers

More specialist classroom support for students

Again, apples and oranges, more teacher's you're talking Billions, lesson plans, might run close to the millions. Specialist classroom support another B$, Education support staff, comparatively less, resourcing curriculum implementation much cheaper. 

So it’s not apples and oranges then, it’s rather more like: Caviar or croutons.

The answer should be caviar, because it costs more, and with more money, in this case money committed to resources, we could do better.

Truly a fascinating exercise, like being asked, choose your favourite student or choose a meal to eat for the rest of your life. Amusing, but hopefully not a great way to make educational decisions that affect an entire generation of young Australians. 

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