That's a fascinating question. My first instinct was a glib response like "they don't pay me nearly enough for those answers." Then I thought I'd offer something quick and simplistic like "they should break up the oversized factory education model."
But the truth is, that any serious answer to your question is going to need to be long and complex. It would need to begin by thinking about what, exactly, the larger goals of public education should be. What, in other words, do we want for kids and why? Then we'd need to accurately identify the specific problems with the current system and how they're holding us back from reaching our goals.
Only then could we start thinking about designing something better that accounts for systemic resource constraints and optimizing resource distribution. And all of that would, ideally, incorporate minority special ed and local needs that really can't be covered by national or even provincial systems.
I'm now tempted to try to write something a lot longer on those topics. But I'm not sure it's really close enough to the "official" mandate of The Audit...and I'm also not sure it would have any impact on the real world.
Thanks for a considered response. Acknowledging complexity is reassuring. Educating children does not happen in a vacuum and the pressures on the system continue to grow. Can we examine local or international instances where, despite challenges, outcomes are promising and identify the factors at play?
I'm playing around with some ideas on this. It may be a while, but the smart money always assumes I'll eventually end up writing something on any given topic.
This is an interesting snapshot, but it fails to relate curriculum content and well-being scores. Finland amongst other progressive education approaches measures their system without academic scores in the form of testing for the first 7 years. I've spent a lot of time looking at education globally and visited many countries for this reason. Standardized testing is a huge problem and most progressive education systems that score high on the PISA's don't do it. I would suggest that if we continue to measure the provinces by how they perform with the current curriculum content and measuring tools, we are living in the dark ages.
Here is a free course the does an intensive overview of the history and content of The Finnish Education System: https://courses.mooc.fi/org/uh-edu/courses/uncover-finnish-education. Chapter 4 includes some information about assessment. The Finns have free education to the PhD. They also offer a housing allowance for post secondary study. Although there are challenges with their system, they have held a high placement in the PISA international scores for the past few decades. Other countries have adopted their approached and see their PISA scores rise. What is most important here though: The Finns have been assessed as the happiest country in the world for the past 7 years in a row. All of these outcomes are based on a social values system of interdependence and collaboration rather than the North American competitive values of independence.
The content and approach is what is important here in comparison to Canadian and North American systems. The philosophy is highly influenced by Steiner and the Waldorf model, but the secret is that most Finns (I've been in classrooms at all levels ) don't believe their education system is great....so they keep experimenting and trying to improve it. That is their secret to success. Adapting and changing with the needs and global changes. Equipping youth for the changing world instead of a static one. Most students in our system will tell you that they learn something for a test and then forget it right afterwards. What is the point of this? After the Pandemic, the government was concerned about math scores. What about the mental health of the students after a Pandemic and our current economic crisis? Kids can't learn when they are stressed.
I'm a big fan of Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. His research shows how flawed studies can be. That's why numbers only paint a part of the picture. Stakeholder interviews are equally important. We often have governments that are conservative and want to privatize education and make good education for the elite. They put in place ministers and teams that know very little about education. School Boards are often part of the problem too. Most teachers I know want to be more progressive and are held back by their boards. In Finland, teachers are allowed to adapt a basic curriculum as they like. They trust their teachers (all have a Master's Degree or more and only 10% make it into the profession. They are payed as much as doctors and lawyers as they believe that they are as valuable). They only have the cream of the crop in the classroom.
You're definitely right that data will never tell us the whole story. But it's often the only substantial clue we've got.
As I wrote in yesterday's post, I have no idea why provinces literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on policy development when so little of their "wisdom" ever makes it to classrooms. Whether or not Canadian teachers are as good as the Finns, they ultimately enjoy near-full control over what and how they teach.
They also don't have "gifted classes" or remedial levels. All students are in the same classroom. If a child is slower or quicker, the other students are expected to help. They also have the appropriate specialists in the classroom. The principal teaches and there is very little administration as they trust their teachers (I can't emphasize this enough....as my studies show that many here don't).
As I've written (https://www.theaudit.ca/p/does-provincial-curriculum-policy-matter), Ontario secondary schools *alone* employ nearly a thousand people with the job title "assistant curriculum leader" who earn more than $100k/year. I'm guessing that those positions wouldn't exist in Finland.
I guess that's a possibility. I see that Alberta's student population rose by 24% between 1999 and 2022, while New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario's populations all fell. Perhaps the spending per student dropped because budgets weren't increased to match student growth.
But I'm not sure that would explain the lower Education Success Index score, since a lot of those metrics were already shaped by policies in earlier periods. And, I realize that that's a bit of a built-in weakness in my index.
I was thinking that some of the constituent parts of your index are not linked to where people went to school. Debt-to-income for Alberta can’t really be broken out into those who attended Alberta schools vs those who migrated to Alberta after graduation. Same for Employment Rate and business formation.
The total net increase over that time was only 94,000 (out of a population of nearly five million). I'm not sure that would be enough to skew the index data.
I should add that the *total* inflow during that time was around 750,000. I would imagine that most provinces have similar movement, so there's some ambiguity to any data we work with.
What is you suggestion for cracking that last nut. If not funding, what is (are) the decisive factor(s)?
That's a fascinating question. My first instinct was a glib response like "they don't pay me nearly enough for those answers." Then I thought I'd offer something quick and simplistic like "they should break up the oversized factory education model."
But the truth is, that any serious answer to your question is going to need to be long and complex. It would need to begin by thinking about what, exactly, the larger goals of public education should be. What, in other words, do we want for kids and why? Then we'd need to accurately identify the specific problems with the current system and how they're holding us back from reaching our goals.
Only then could we start thinking about designing something better that accounts for systemic resource constraints and optimizing resource distribution. And all of that would, ideally, incorporate minority special ed and local needs that really can't be covered by national or even provincial systems.
I'm now tempted to try to write something a lot longer on those topics. But I'm not sure it's really close enough to the "official" mandate of The Audit...and I'm also not sure it would have any impact on the real world.
But it's certainly worth thinking about.
Thanks for a considered response. Acknowledging complexity is reassuring. Educating children does not happen in a vacuum and the pressures on the system continue to grow. Can we examine local or international instances where, despite challenges, outcomes are promising and identify the factors at play?
I'm playing around with some ideas on this. It may be a while, but the smart money always assumes I'll eventually end up writing something on any given topic.
This is an interesting snapshot, but it fails to relate curriculum content and well-being scores. Finland amongst other progressive education approaches measures their system without academic scores in the form of testing for the first 7 years. I've spent a lot of time looking at education globally and visited many countries for this reason. Standardized testing is a huge problem and most progressive education systems that score high on the PISA's don't do it. I would suggest that if we continue to measure the provinces by how they perform with the current curriculum content and measuring tools, we are living in the dark ages.
What metrics does Finland use to measure their system?
Here is a free course the does an intensive overview of the history and content of The Finnish Education System: https://courses.mooc.fi/org/uh-edu/courses/uncover-finnish-education. Chapter 4 includes some information about assessment. The Finns have free education to the PhD. They also offer a housing allowance for post secondary study. Although there are challenges with their system, they have held a high placement in the PISA international scores for the past few decades. Other countries have adopted their approached and see their PISA scores rise. What is most important here though: The Finns have been assessed as the happiest country in the world for the past 7 years in a row. All of these outcomes are based on a social values system of interdependence and collaboration rather than the North American competitive values of independence.
The content and approach is what is important here in comparison to Canadian and North American systems. The philosophy is highly influenced by Steiner and the Waldorf model, but the secret is that most Finns (I've been in classrooms at all levels ) don't believe their education system is great....so they keep experimenting and trying to improve it. That is their secret to success. Adapting and changing with the needs and global changes. Equipping youth for the changing world instead of a static one. Most students in our system will tell you that they learn something for a test and then forget it right afterwards. What is the point of this? After the Pandemic, the government was concerned about math scores. What about the mental health of the students after a Pandemic and our current economic crisis? Kids can't learn when they are stressed.
How are the Finns able to overcome institutional inertia and academic territorialism to be so agile?
I'm a big fan of Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. His research shows how flawed studies can be. That's why numbers only paint a part of the picture. Stakeholder interviews are equally important. We often have governments that are conservative and want to privatize education and make good education for the elite. They put in place ministers and teams that know very little about education. School Boards are often part of the problem too. Most teachers I know want to be more progressive and are held back by their boards. In Finland, teachers are allowed to adapt a basic curriculum as they like. They trust their teachers (all have a Master's Degree or more and only 10% make it into the profession. They are payed as much as doctors and lawyers as they believe that they are as valuable). They only have the cream of the crop in the classroom.
You're definitely right that data will never tell us the whole story. But it's often the only substantial clue we've got.
As I wrote in yesterday's post, I have no idea why provinces literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on policy development when so little of their "wisdom" ever makes it to classrooms. Whether or not Canadian teachers are as good as the Finns, they ultimately enjoy near-full control over what and how they teach.
They also don't have "gifted classes" or remedial levels. All students are in the same classroom. If a child is slower or quicker, the other students are expected to help. They also have the appropriate specialists in the classroom. The principal teaches and there is very little administration as they trust their teachers (I can't emphasize this enough....as my studies show that many here don't).
As I've written (https://www.theaudit.ca/p/does-provincial-curriculum-policy-matter), Ontario secondary schools *alone* employ nearly a thousand people with the job title "assistant curriculum leader" who earn more than $100k/year. I'm guessing that those positions wouldn't exist in Finland.
I'm definitely starting to warm to their system.
How much do you think inter-provincial migration inflates Alberta’s ranking?
I guess that's a possibility. I see that Alberta's student population rose by 24% between 1999 and 2022, while New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario's populations all fell. Perhaps the spending per student dropped because budgets weren't increased to match student growth.
But I'm not sure that would explain the lower Education Success Index score, since a lot of those metrics were already shaped by policies in earlier periods. And, I realize that that's a bit of a built-in weakness in my index.
I was thinking that some of the constituent parts of your index are not linked to where people went to school. Debt-to-income for Alberta can’t really be broken out into those who attended Alberta schools vs those who migrated to Alberta after graduation. Same for Employment Rate and business formation.
That is an interesting point. So I just looked up the net inflow to Alberta of interprovincial migration between 2014 and 2024 (Q1):
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1710002001
The total net increase over that time was only 94,000 (out of a population of nearly five million). I'm not sure that would be enough to skew the index data.
I should add that the *total* inflow during that time was around 750,000. I would imagine that most provinces have similar movement, so there's some ambiguity to any data we work with.