My School Website – Measuring Output vs Input.
Here in Australia the Federal Government has recently started a new website called My School This website provides profile information about all of the schools in Australia (government and private).
The information detailed is various educational results from National testing that all students undertake in Years 3, 5, 7, & 9. Also the final year results are also included. The results for each school are compared to the national average and to statically similar schools.
The website has created some considerable controversy. The teachers unions are unhappy. A number of the school Principal’s are also unhappy. Their arguments is that these results are not reflective of the schools performance.
I am not an expert in assessing the educational results of a school, I am just a parent with a keen interest in measurement.
The metrics may not be perfect but they are better than what we had prior : – nothing. One measure that I would like to see is to track the results of a cohort of students through the schools. This would show the impact of the school. Given we are testing each student and then compiling them, it would relatively easy to track the students results throughout their time at the school.
The focus in the pass in education has been measuring the input. The politicians, teachers union, and schools themselves would talk about :-
- how many new teachers are employed
- class sizes
- dollars being spent nationally, state and school level.
The output though is a much more accurate reflection whether the money has been well spent. The My School website had least is moving towards measuring the output ie the educational results. So why the objections. Could it be that this start to reveal where the money is being wasted. Could it be that finally the focus on output will mean that people will be shown up.
This lesson is just as applicable to business. Be careful of measures that focus on the input. It is the output that is important. In business the output is measured by looking at what our customers think and do. Our measures must focus on what is important to the customer.
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