The Lean Education Manifesto

A Synthesis of 900+ Systematic Reviews for Visible Learning in Developing Countries

Arran Hamilton, John Hattie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000547054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The global expansion of education is one of the greatest successes of the modern era. More children have access to schooling and leave with higher levels of learning than at any time in history. However, 250 million+ children in developing countries are still not in school, and 600 million+ attend but get little out of it – a situation further exacerbated by the dislocations from COVID-19.

In a context where education funding is stagnating and even declining, Arran Hamilton and John Hattie suggest that we need to start thinking Lean and explicitly look for ways of unlocking more from less. Drawing on data from 900+ systematic reviews of 53, 000+ research studies – from the perspective of efficiency of impact – they controversially suggest that for low- and middle-income countries:

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• Maybe pre-service initial teacher training programs could be significantly shortened and perhaps even stopped

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• Maybe teachers need not have degree-level qualifications in the subjects they teach, and they might not really need degrees at all!

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• Maybe the hours per week and years of schooling that each child receives could be significantly reduced, or at least not increased

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• Maybe learners can be taught more effectively and less resource intensively in mixed-age classrooms, with peers tutoring one another

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• Maybe different approaches to curriculum, instruction, and the length of the school day might be more cost-effective ways of driving up student achievement than hiring extra teachers, reducing class sizes, or building more classrooms

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• Maybe school-based management, public–private partnerships, and performance-related pay are blind and expensive alleys that have limited influence or impact on what teachers actually do in classrooms.

This groundbreaking and thought-provoking work also identifies a range of initiatives that are worth starting. It introduces the Leaning to G.O.L.D. methodology to support school and system leaders in selecting, implementing, and scaling those high-probability initiatives; and to rigorously de-implement those to be stopped. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in education.

PART 1Scene setting

CHAPTER 1 The global massification of education

DOI: 10.4324/9781003166313-3

Writers of amazing fiction often employ a neat trick. They start by painting a picture of an idyllic world and then introduce impending doom in the form of an imminent meteor strike or deadly virus. Then, enter stage left, a band of plucky but under-funded heroes who miraculously save the day. We love this story arc so much that we decided to steal it for this chapter. In the first section we review the global history of education in 3,000 words or less, i.e., the idyllic world of globally moving from near zero to (near) hero in 300 short years – albeit with major bits of plumbing still to sort out. Then in the second section we build and stoke the tension. We explain that access to schooling (which is the easier problem of education) is not translating into student learning (the harder problem); and that in the fallout of COVID-19 both the easier and harder problems have become even HARDER. If you are wondering who the plucky but under-funded heroes are, well, that’s (probably) you. We hope that the Manifesto gives you the tools and inspiration you need.

The global history of education in >3,000 words

We opened this book by saying that according to the Big Bang Theory, our universe started life 13.8 billion years ago as an infinitesimally small singularity that suddenly inflated at a speed faster than light (Planck Collaboration, 2020). We think this so wondrous that it is worth repeating here. Because it’s that great inflation (coupled with Darwinian evolution) that apparently led to us being here right now.

Our ancestral cousins have been around in one form or another for approximately six million years, or about 0.04% of the time the universe has existed. However, the variety that is us (Homo Sapiens), has wandered the savannah and latterly the strip mall for a mere 200,000 years (Harari, 2015). Unlike many of our near and distant cousins, we have been generously endowed with prodigious cognitive capabilities. This gives us the ingenious ability to re-write our operating systems (a.k.a. learn), and enables us to preserve and transmit knowledge across the generations (Tegmark, 2017).

However, for at least 99% of the time humanity has existed there was almost certainly no systemic or centrally organized approach to education. Until approximately 12,000 years ago our ancestors largely operated in nomadic tribal bands numbering no more than 150–200 fluid members. They hunted and foraged the land and once supplies of good grub were exhausted, they moved on (Barker, 2009). Our ancestors had no schoolhouses (or school caves), no semesters or terms, no professional teachers, and no standardized assessments (Diamond, 2012). That does not mean that there was no teaching and learning. It just infers that this occurred informally. It (also) does not mean that there was no ‘graduation’, although for our ancestors the final ‘assessment’ was far more likely to be in the form of a hunting trial or an arduous and life-threatening rite of passage rather than a three-hour written examination (Forth, 2018).

Around 10,000 BCE, some bands of humans cottoned on to the idea of planting the land and building long-term farming settlements, rather than foraging and departing; although it took several thousand years for this ‘innovation’ to spread across the planet (Bocquet-Appel, 2011). The agricultural revolution allowed people to stay put, to build houses, store food, and collect and hoard more private property than what they could carry on their backs. The leap to farming enabled people to trade and for more complex economies to form, with specialization of roles, including advisors, apothecaries, and tutors. And a mere 5,000+ years ago (sometime between 3,400 and 3,100 BCE) some unnamed/unknown forebears invented writing (Chrisomalis, 2009).

Despite all these wondrous advances, there was still no centrally organized, state-controlled schooling (Harris, 1989). Socrates tutored Plato; Plato schooled Aristotle; private tutors taught the Confucian classics to the Chinese so that they could pass the Imperial Examinations and enter the state bureaucracy; master craftsmen trained their apprentices; and parents taught their children. A key catalyst for further change was arguably the invention of the Guttenberg Press in 1440 and its subsequent commercialization, which resulted in a significant increase in the circulation of books and pamphlets (Vincent, 2019).

To interact with this new print-based technology and the knowledge released from it, you needed to be able to read. So, large swathes of people suddenly became extremely motivated to learn their ABCs. In 1460s London, for example, the literacy rate was already as high as 40% without any organized schooling (De Pelijt, 2019). Then, by the 1660s, more than 770 privately endowed secondary schools had sprouted in England; and by 1750 the male literacy rate for the whole of England exceeded 50% (as measured by the proportion of people that could sign their name in a marriage register rather than merely append an X) (Graff, 1995).

In other European countries, informal schools mushroomed to teach the skill of reading, so that people could consume the ever-growing body of printed matter. French peasants organized community classes taught by the most literate in the community; Russian vol’nye shkoly (or ‘wild’ schools) educated rural children; Irish ‘hedge schools’, which often lacked a school room, literally taught children at the edge of a field, by the hedgerow; and in Prussia and Austria unlicensed Winkelschulen (or corner schools) were established by preachers and army veterans to teach the urban poor (Vincent, 2019).

However, by the 18th century a second big bang of sorts occurred: the rise of universal state-funded basic education. The Prussians led the charge as early as 1717 and by the 1830s this had evolved into a national system of free primary schooling that was provided by salaried teachers who had been trained at a specialized college, in publicly funded school buildings, delivering a standardized and secular national curriculum, and with external supervision/inspection to ensure the quality of instruction (Gray, 2013). The system that was pioneered in Prussia is remarkably similar to the schooling model that exists today. And whilst it has become popular in some circles to call this the ‘factory model’, its origins clearly pre-date the industrial revolution.

After Prussia let the (educational) genie out of the bottle, its schooling model was quickly emulated by its neighbors, who also sought to introduce universal primary education. These included Sweden in 1723, Denmark in 1739, Bavaria in 1771, and the First Polish Republic in 1783. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, ambitious plans for universal schooling were then slowly implemented during Napoleonic era France (Vincent, 2019).

By the early 1800s, as European nation states began to measure their attainments in relation to one another using statistical measures, there was considerable interest in education innovation. Policies were increasingly copied, educational manifestos penned, and transnational fact-finding tours undertaken. In 1843, Horace Mann, who was the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, toured Europe and produced a widely read report on the benefits and mechanics of universal basic education, which was particularly influenced by his observation of the Prussian system (Massachusetts Board of Education, 1844).

Mann’s report arguably helped catalyze universal basic education in the United States and the establishment of teacher training colleges (known as Normal Schools). And by 1870, these approaches had also been emulated in the United Kingdom with the passage of the Elementary Education Act. This resulted in the establishment of publicly funded school boards that gradually took over the operation of more than 3,000 pre-existing independent schools (Baker, 2001). England’s ‘monitorial’ schools, devised by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, had classes of students with teachers and monitors (who were the most able older students acting as teaching assistants). These methods are still evident in the structures of schools today, as are remnants of the US and UK ‘Dame’ schools, which started the move to females dominating the role of teacher in many parts of the world (Barnard, 1961).

The exact confluence of circumstances that resulted in the emergence of state-funded and (generally) state-operated universal primary (and latterly secondary) education varied between nations but seemed to be driven by a mixture of what we call Noble, Grey, and Dark Drivers. We think of Noble Drivers as being altruistic – the motivator being to educate citizens as an end (or moral purpose) in itself. Grey Drivers leverage education primarily for other societal ends, like nation-state building, which can be positive or negative depending on the founding principles of the state. And Dark Drivers, by contrast, are about the personal benefits that education system founders and operators can derive from their management of budgets, appointments, and promotions.

The principal and interlinked Noble Drivers were arguably:

• Enlightenment values. By the time that governments had come round to the idea of universal and publicly funded primary education, the philosophical ideas of great Enlightenment thinkers had been percolating for between 50 to 100 years. The works of Emmanuel Kant (1996 [1784]), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1991 [1762]), and David Hume (Hume & Millican, 2007 [1748]) sowed the ideational seeds that humans were malleable and could be improved through education, have human rights, and that those rights include being educated so that we can all unlock our full potential(s). These values were (much) later enshrined in the UN Declarations on Human Rights (1948) and the Rights of the Child (1958).
• Human capital development. Equipping children with skills in literacy and numeracy and the general traits and dispositions that support their successful entry to a fulfilling adult life and to employment (Becker, 1993). To our minds (and those of most educators) this is a core purpose of education, but we accept that it might not always have been the prime driver/motivator behind the initial decision of states to fund education through taxation and to deliver it with vast armies of state-employed teachers!

Therefore, these Noble ideals were buttressed by a wide range of Grey Drivers, including:

• Curtailing the power of the church. In many European contexts, networks of privately operated schools had already been long-established by (Catholic and Protestant) religious organizations. These schools gave their respective churches considerable power to shape the ideas that went into people’s heads when they were at their most malleable (i.e., when they were children). Therefore, in some contexts, governments were (likely) at least partially motivated be the desire to wrestle control of schooling away from the church and firmly into secular state hands (Pritchett, 2013).
• Nation building. Many of the countries that first established state-run schooling were relatively young. Prussia was only founded in 1525; the United Kingdom, 1707; the United States, 1776; the French First Republic, 1792; and the Kingdom of Bavaria, 1805. Young countries need a ready mechanism to sow the national mythology, teach the national anthem, collectively salute the flag, standardize the national dialect, build unity, and forge respect for national institutions of government (Ande...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Author biographies
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 Scene setting
• Part 2 Warm leads and blind alleys
• Part 3 Evidence into action
• Appendix: High-level summary of 57 developing country ‘what works best’ for education systematic reviews
• References
• Index