Education does not have a single defined purpose. Although the UK Government has some aegis through the Department for Education, it is devolved to different Governments, and they have their own ideas about priorities and structures. There are National Curriculum guidelines for most subjects, although not all, and there are some useful, supportive and coherent subject communities and associations which identify something akin to disciplinary concepts and practices. Some are aligned strongly with a university and wider academic tradition; others with a model of thinking, and other school subjects align with multiple academic domains (e.g. Religious Education, Physical Education) etc.
So, there are a wide range of educational philosophies, approaches, and values that are applied in different domains. Whether that’s across a regional or geographic grouping, or whether through a structured approach by a multi-academy trust or similar, I think it’s fair to say that we have become more conscious of the way that it’s our values that shape our approach to education.
And, in general, I think that is a good thing. I think it’s right that we have principles and a heterogeneity in education: I do not think we all must agree, nor do I think we should all have exactly the same approach. I might not like a particular approach to teaching and learning, but if there are others who do, and that it works within their values and for their context, then they should have the right to do it.
I am not, massively, in favour of the ‘business’-ification of education either. For sure, there are things we can learn from other models of leadership and working, but I’ve reflected enough with colleagues to acknowledge that there are a set of unique features of education’s domain to make it difficult to import wholescale ideas. I think we’ve seen that in places with the ‘what works’ framework from medicine – where a far more universal purpose and desired outcome means that there’s much more commonality in what we want to achieve, and hence in the way we go about improving it.
But I think education’s pursuit of values may have some hidden challenges, and in particular, I think we’ve lost our way a little bit on establishing the discussions with a full set of information. We are confident in the assertion of our values and the ‘benefits’ of many of our decision-making.
I don’t think we always have full visibility of the costs.
How does this work in other sectors?
Let me explain what I mean by reference to another domain. My wife works in commercial law as a solicitor. Like education, there are a range of professional qualification routes, and then individuals have a number of years of post-qualification experience. This is often tied to pay scales (you might see expectations of 4-6 years PQE) in the same way that we might talk about UPS1-3 in a job advert.
Solicitors at commercial (rather than High Street) firms tend to be banded in to junior, middle and senior leadership roles. A partner might take more time in management, leadership and business strategy (winning clients, thought leadership etc.) in the same way as a member of SLT might. Senior associates (some have other names, like Counsel, or Legal Director) are the middle leaders of the firm. They direct some work, they lead on pieces, but they still have a lot of their time doing law. Finally, the junior lawyers – associates – are often doing the majority of their time in directed work, and have limited leadership or decision-making. There are also support roles – paralegals, and other support staff – who are not qualified as solicitors, but may have significant practical and lived experience.
One of the key divergences from education is that there is a keen sense of output directly linked to time and expertise. A matter or problem might be brought by a client, who will pay the firm not for the scope of the problem, the significance to them, or the intellectual challenge, but primarily through the work and effort it takes the solicitors to solve it. Lawyers charge by the hour, and although they expect to have time during their working day where they might be doing other things, the intent is for time to be ‘billable’ on client matters. For any given client matter, the lead solicitor is expected to be able to estimate what time and cost this will take, and provide an estimate as part of the initial engagement. For some matters, they might even take a ‘fixed fee’ approach. For others, they’ll keep the client updated as they go.
Each tier of expertise has a headline ‘billable rate’. This is – assuming no discounts for bulk buying, or preferential rates for certain clients – what someone of a certain seniority charges per hour of their time. Let’s say that at Imaginary Law Firm, partners might charge £500-800 per hour, senior associates might charge £300-600 per hour, and juniors might charge £150-400 per hour. Whether you have a fixed budget, or you are trying to persuade your client that they should choose your firm, you have to be strategic about how you deploy your resources. You have to know what work is going to cost – in time, and in expertise – and you have to make sure that the right people are doing the right thing. It prioritises efficiency and clear decision-making. You cannot charge an hour’s time for a partner to do the photocopying – you get a junior, or a support role to do that. You don’t bring everyone together on a meeting, because it’s literally a ticking clock of billable time, unless it is essential and adds significant value.
Doesn’t it work like this in education?
Let’s consider some examples of values-aligned things that I think we would all recognise in schools.
Example 1: A senior leader spends multiple duty sessions per week on the front gate, welcoming pupils or being a contact point for parents (or supervising lunch queues, if you prefer). This sets the right tone. This is aligned with our values, and can also be good to build staff culture – they are part of the team, they are doing duties, and they are visible.
Example 2: Staff attend a compulsory twilight CPD for one hour after school each fortnightly cycle. This helps build a teaching and learning culture, coherence of school culture and values, and is a key and attractive part of being a professional educator.
Example 3: Instead of getting a generic textbook or buying an expensive off the shelf option, a Head of Department decides that they will all do their own resource creation and slide decks. It is too expensive to buy textbooks, so staff design and write booklets to accompany this curriculum, and all staff do their own photocopying at the start of term so that it is ready for the students. This is aligned with our values of a contextualised and personal curriculum, avoids headline costs of textbook purchase, and allows people to really enjoy curriculum design and resource creation.
I think many people would praise these things as good examples of leadership, culture and values in schools. Of course, I think we’d be able to identify a number of other more challenging scenarios – perhaps extensive data drops, triple marking, or significant time spent on mock examinations at key points in the year – which may be part of the expectations, without necessarily being so clearly aligned with and driven by our values… but for now, let’s consider those another time!
What are the issues of this approach?
In and of themselves, I don’t think there is anything ‘wrong’ with the examples here, provided that the decision has been made with a full understanding of benefits and costs.
For Example 1, clearly there are huge benefits in terms of the impact the senior leader might have on the pupil and staff culture, and the relationship they build with the reality on the ground. But what are the costs? In a law firm, they’d look at the partners’ hourly rate and ask 1. Is this the most effective use of this person’s time and costs? 2. What else could (and should) they be doing with that strategic expertise instead? We might reflect on this in schools. If the senior leader has a wonderful and healthy work life balance, does not take excessive work or worry home, and the school’s staffing ratio is such that their time doing duty does not have leadership or strategic implications, then the full consideration of those costs leads to the same outcome.
But if doing duty leaves that leader harried, meaning that they can’t get their own lunch, meet their own workload within the school day, and have excessive work to take home (or worse), then perhaps the staffing, fiscal and workload costs aren’t worth it. Maybe we’d be better hiring a lunch time supervisor to supervise lunch, and let the senior leader do strategic leadership?
For our second example, we might be very positive about the impact of teaching and learning. But how much does it physically cost us to have all of our staff present in one place at one time? What’s the ‘hourly rate’ of the staff? How much are we prepared to spend to do that kind of training, and do we even consider it in our ‘budget’ for CPD? We might know exactly how much it costs to hire an external expert, and evaluate their impact very rigorously. Do we ever do the same for the internal work? Our law firm knows – and either considers, or absorbs – the costs of staff meetings, professional development and training. Billables make it obvious, and you are probably expected to apportion a percentage of your time on ‘non-billable’ activities like this. What are our ‘non-billable’ activities in education? Are we still doing them, even after the suggestions about being involved in displays, or admin excesses?
Again, setting aside the fiscal implications, what are the workload and wellbeing ‘costs’ here, and how do we know what they are? If Teacher A, who loves this stuff and has done their Masters in Teaching & Learning in it, is happily engaged and enthused, it might be a key part of their happiness and motivation at work that week. But poor Teacher B, who was already feeling like they had a few hours of work to do when they got home that night, and a set of exams to mark for Year 11 ahead of a data drop deadline… they can’t imagine a worse way to be spending their time. And Teacher C, who has other life responsibilities – whether parenting, caring, or looking after their own health – what are the costs to them? Do they have to pay for additional out of hours care for their own child, or make alternative travel arrangements as a result? How do we know the impact and effectiveness of our training, and the use of our staff time? What about other staff time? Meetings? Assemblies? Accompanying a form to supervise X? Duties?
For Example 3, there’s a great value in a curriculum that suits the needs of our learners and our contexts, and it’s hard to quantify that. But the budget submission for that Department looks great! They’ve not had to request additional funds for textbooks or curriculum resources. At the end of the year, they might even have a little left over. “Use it or lose it”, the Department are told, and they think up some things to spend the money on so that all of the allocated funds are spent.
We think little of asking highly paid middle leaders to spend tens/hundreds of hours on design – many because they like it, some because they know it needs to be done – or photocopying, admin tasks or resources. Some schools have admin support, of course, and where possible, you might have someone to produce your booklets for you – but it’s rare they will be involved in learning design or anything beyond reprographics.
How much time does it take a Department team to design and build a great set of resources and booklets? Do we know? Do we allocate them time, or expect it to be done without tracking it? How do we know what that’s cost them, and have a reasonable comparison against the commercial option?
Reflections
I am not advocating for a business model of education. I don’t think we should have hourly rates, and always be looking for the lowest-cost operation, or the most efficient. That’s a grim vision of schools, and an unpleasant reality. Many of these things help us build relationships that make our teaching better, and help us to look after young people and nurture them. It’s not how many of us approach education as a career, and we can’t put a price on some of those things.
I am, however, a big fan of making good decisions. And I believe that an underlying principle of good decision-making is to have as much information as possible. I think, all too often, that we have a significant bias towards visible values, benefits and costs, and we don’t look too hard for others. While law has clear and transparent structures for hours, and the underpinning principles of effective cost-management that accompanies that, education all too often assumes that staff costs and staff time are invisible.
We don’t consider the ‘hourly rate’ of our senior and middle leaders, and think about whether some of those asks should sit at their level. We don’t count and know the true costs of implementing a decision based on work that our staff can do, compared to an external or commercial solution. While directed time and some of the recommendations for workload reduction give hints as to things that might not be cost effective, the mechanism for solving those things is not clear – and so many will end up with teachers, or not being done.
How do we bring a better sense of visibility to some of these hidden costs? How do we ensure that our decision-making is effective and efficient in the round, using all of the information? And if we still value certain things highly enough to do them, how do we support, accommodate or balance that for the individuals concerned?
Education should not be utilitarian nor commercial. There are a number of things here that are done deliberately in accordance with the values of a particular school and setting, and that are rightly praised as good practice. But I think – in a workload, wellbeing, recruitment and retention crisis – we need to also praise and think about good quality decision making as a key practice too. I’m all in favour of more information, and a sense of the values *and* costs of what we want to achieve together.
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