improvement at both 3
rdand 6
thgrades
72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58 56 54 0 2009- 10 2006- 07 2004- 05 2002- 03 2000- 01 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58 56 54 52 50 0 2009- 10 2006- 07 2004- 05 2002- 03 2000- 01
Proportion of 3rdgrade students proficient in
reading, writing, and mathematics Proportion of 6
thgrade students proficient in reading, writing, and mathematics
SOURCE: Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office; IELD Ontario Case Study Report 2007
In 2003 a new Premier and education team entered office in Ontario and launched school system reforms
Education reforms Education reforms
Mathematics Writing Reading
we did. Instead, we needed methods to get school professionals’ ideas so we could build on them. We regularly brought people together to share their practices and exchange ideas. We did almost no mandating of specific strategies – we got them to develop their own plans. We didn’t micromanage schools or districts in this process. We empowered them.” Between the period of 2003 and 2007, Ontario registered a strong rise in student proficiency levels in both third and sixth grades (Exhibit 21). Following a slight plateau in 2007, Ontario’s rises have continued through 2009/10 for four of the six assessments. This pattern of a steep rise followed by a plateau is a common phenomenon (England and Boston have also experienced it). This might be due the fact that once the “easy wins” have been achieved in classroom instruction, further improvements take longer to embed and are harder to achieve.
Singapore provides an example of how a system shifts in emphasis as it goes through the various stages of the entire improvement journey, from poor to great, as Singapore as done over the past forty years. During this time it has decreased central guidance on teaching and learning as its system performance has risen. Singapore system leaders describe their system as having gone through three phases: “Survival-driven” (1959-78), “Efficiency-driven” (1979-96), and “Ability-driven” (1997-present).
Singapore’s Survival phase was primarily focused on enrolment and ensuring that every child had a school seat. This resulted in schools being built at the rate of one per month and the teaching force doubling, from 10,500 in 1959 to over 19,000 by 1968. By the end of this period, Singapore had achieved near universal primary education. However, almost thirty percent of primary school pupils did not progress to secondary school, and English language proficiency was low and educational wastage high (in terms of failing to achieve the expected standards and leaving school prematurely).
The Efficiency phase focused on reducing performance variation across the school system. “Our challenge was how to achieve above average outcomes from below average inputs,” recalls one
Singaporean leader. Students were streamed into different tracks based on their aptitude, not only to reduce dropout rates, but just as importantly, to ease the burden on teachers so that they only taught classes of students with similar capability levels. Simultaneously, Singapore created the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore (CDIS) in 1980 in order to develop a suite of supporting teaching materials that could be used off-the-shelf by less-experienced and less-skilled teachers. A Singaporean system leader recalls, “For each lesson, we created the lesson plan, the teacher manual, the student workbook, and the activity or experiment or video that would open the lesson.” Each classroom in the same grade and subject level received exactly the same resources, and CDIS held workshops with teachers to explain how to use the materials effectively. Moreover, teachers had to keep a record book of their classroom activities, which were submitted to the principal every Monday. Regular student assessments enabled the Ministry of Education to monitor student outcome progress. As one system leader noted, “We were highly prescriptive in our teaching and had a mass production mindset … We were textbook-bound and examination-driven.” Through the 1980s and 1990s, Singapore raised the floor of performance in the system significantly, and narrowed the achievement gap across its ethnic groups (Exhibit 22).
Singapore moved from rigid prescription to greater flexibility as it embarked on its good to great improvement journey. By the end of the 1980s, Singapore had introduced school formats that had greater autonomy, including establishing Independent Schools in 1988 and Autonomous Schools in 1994. By 1995, Singapore’s school system was among the top-performing systems in the world, topping TIMSS rankings in both math and science that year. The Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore closed its doors in 1996 because “it was no longer needed.” Then, in 1997, Singapore launched “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (TSLN), marking the start of its Ability phase and emphasizing a shift in focus toward enabling each student to reach the maximum of his or her potential. This focus on student ability required schools to be given much greater flexibility and responsibility for how they should teach and manage their students. TSLN gave teachers greater