A consultant's ideas to improve schools in the US

Thanks to my wife for referring me to this New York Times article about how a senior adviser to Tony Blair and now a partner with McKinsey and Co, one of the world's top management consultancies, was being asked to help improve schools in the US. I read three points in this article that are worth highlighting.

The first point Sir Michael Barber raises is in regards to teachers.

“What have all the great school systems of the world got in common?” he said, ticking off four systems that he said deserved to be called great, in Finland, Singapore, South Korea and Alberta, Canada. “Four systems, three continents — what do they have in common?

“They all select their teachers from the top third of their college graduates, whereas the U.S. selects its teachers from the bottom third of graduates. This is one of the big challenges for the U.S. education system: What are you going to do over the next 15 to 20 years to recruit ever better people into teaching?”

South Korea pays its teachers much more than England and America, and has accepted larger class sizes as a trade-off, he said.

Finland, by contrast, draws top-tier college graduates to the profession not with huge paychecks, but by fostering exceptionally high public respect for teachers, he said.

I can't say much about the education system in Finland, South Korea and Alberta, Canada but I can say something about the education system in Singapore, where I spent 4 years studying.

As far as I know, teachers in Singapore are paid a respectable salary and continual efforts are made by the Ministry of Education in Singapore to review the salary schemes of teachers. Most teachers lead a decent lifestyle and perhaps with not as much stress as those working in the private sector or for MNCs in Singapore. And choosing teaching as a career path is also a respectable one though many parents would probably prefer their kids to be earning more money in the private sector.

To be fair to the Malaysian government and to the Ministry of Education, steps have been made to increase the salaries of teachers. From some of the comments from one of Tony's previous post, I gather that the starting salary of teachers have increased and adding in the allowances which they receive, their salaries are almost commensurate with some starting salaries in the private sector.

I also recall when I was back in Malaysia in May this year that the hardship or transport allowances for teachers who teach in the more rural parts of Malaysia, especially in Sabah and Sarawak were to be increased, I think as much as up to 1500RM per month.

But my impression is that teaching as a profession is not attracting anywhere close to the top quality Malaysians who graduate from either a local university or from abroad. When was the last time you heard a friend who after graduating decided to go for teacher training and decided to become a teacher at either the primary or secondary level? While I know many friends who are teaching in private and public colleges and universities in Malaysia, I cannot name one single friend, Malay, Chinese or Indian who is teaching in a primary or secondary school in Malaysia. If I was a betting man, I would say that most of our readers would not be able to name more than 5 of their friends who are teachers in either primary or secondary schools. I'm also willing to bet that many of our readers would probably be able to name at least 5 people who are either aunts, uncles or parents of their friends who either are teachers or were teachers and have retired.

Truth be told, I don't know of many of my Singaporean friends who have entered the teaching profession but I can at least name a couple of acquaintances from my Raffles Junior College cohort who have gone into the teaching profession in Singapore.

So if pay is not necessarily one of the main obstacles in attracting decent talent to the teaching profession in Malaysia, what are some alternative explanations? A few that comes to mind off the top of my head include: (i) the possibility of being assigned to a rural school, especially for those who are more used to the more urban lifestyle (something which Singapore teachers don't have to face) (ii) the possibility of being assigned to a school with a lot of disciplinary problems (which describes a majority of urban schools) especially at the secondary level (iii) the perception that there is little prospect for career advancements, more so on the part of the non-Malays (iv) the declining respect for teaching as a profession, perhaps because of a lack of publicity and marketing on the part of the Ministry of Education (v) the lack of aggressive recruitment drives on the part of the MOE.

The problems facing our primary and secondary education system are complex but certainly addressing the quality of the teaching staff has got to be one of the main priorities.

The 2nd point he raises is in regards to the amount of control a federal government has over the education system.

Comparing the UK with the US, he says:

But more important, he said, Britain’s political system endows its prime ministers with greater powers to impose new practices than any corresponding American official enjoys, since basic education policies in the United States are set in the 50 states and in the nation’s 15,000 local school districts, he said. Even though President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Law has considerably increased federal influence over what happens in American schools, Washington still plays a subsidiary role to states and municipalities, he said.

“Once Britain’s prime minister is elected, he has a majority in Parliament and it’s much easier to change things,” Sir Michael said. “In contrast, the founding fathers created a political culture where you have to get consensus from competing factions.”

The Malaysian federal government is similar to the UK's in that it has almost complete oversight in regards to education matters in Malaysia. Therefore, it should be easier for the Malaysian government to change education policies in Malaysia compared to the US.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility and with this power, the Ministry of Education has within its capability, the ability to do great harm as well as to do great good. This includes haphazard changes in the syllabus, frequent changes in national education blueprint depending on the minister in charge, the failure to implement policies set by either the cabinet or the minister and so on.

But the fact that there is centralization of power in regards to education policies in Malaysia means that the potential to change our education system for the better is there and can take place faster compared to a context where the jurisdiction for education matters is much more decentralized.

The third point that he makes is in regards to the review process in evaluating schools.

The world’s best school rating systems, including England’s, he said, not only consider test results, but also send government inspectors directly into schools to search for causes of poor performance. McKinsey’s report on Ohio recommended that the state create a corps of inspectors like England’s, which reviews every school at least once every three years, examining the teaching environment and the caliber of school leadership, and suggesting changes, he said.

New York has set up a similar corps of inspectors, he added.


I'm not sure what kind of a review process our MOE has in regards to our primary and secondary schools but I'd be very interested to find out. For example, does the MOE try to teach the 'best practices' of the top performing schools to other schools? Does it have some sort of internal rating process in regards to how well individual schools are performing? Does it have a review process by which non-academic results (such as the UPSR or the PMR) are evaluated? My guess is that currently, no such comprehensive review process exists and that not much is done in regards to trying to improve the worst performing schools in the country.

For those interested in the report which Sir Michael Barber and McKinsey and Co did for the Ohio state government, please click here. It's over a hundred pages long. I'm sure that there's a lot of stuff in there which is already known to us ('taking your watch and telling you the time and charging you for it' consultant practice) but I'm sure that there are insights to be garnered and interesting comparisons which can be made between the US education system (or Ohio to be more exact) and the Malaysian education system.(For example, I was surprised to find that disadvantaged Asian and White students performed better than non-disadvantaged Black and Hispanic students and that Asian and White students performed better than Black and Hispanic students even after controlling for income)

In the meantime, we should keep our eyes on how well our MOE is doing in regards to keeping with the objectives of the latest National Education Blueprint. I'm happy to hear that the MOE is conducting regular reviews on how many of the Blueprint's objectives and plans they have implemented / achieved, according to reports in the past few months.