Vicki Phillips on the educational work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Vicki Phillips is Director of Education, College Ready, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She set the stage for her talk by mentioning 'uncommon leadership'. The Foundation concentrates on ways to train, inspire, and empower good leaders for the benefit of students.
The Foundation believes that all people have the chance to lead happy and productive lives so they are looking for places around the world where educational development will reap the biggest rewards. They are prepared to take risks, even to fail, to tackle tough challenges and have the advantage of credibility - they are not tied to any ideology, simply doing what works, based on evidence and research. As such, they've learned three things:
- education is opportunity
- get the right structure, plus teaching and learning, makes the most difference
- make good practice viral so that it's possible to scale investments
The Foundation's focus on innovation is intended to change the system dramatically. Phillips refered to a school in the US where pupils do most of their work online, which produced different pupil expectations. Pupils don't have to 'power down' when they come in to school - the level of technology available is comparable to what they have at home. Crucially, this is also combined with access to the adults they need.
Phillips continued with the theme of 'powering up' in connection with teachers. Powering up the teaching profession is important as US teachers feel 'powered down' with a lack of respect. The Foundation aspires to let teachers be as flexible and creative they can be. They are in the process of creating a whole range of free support for teachers, hoping to set common standards to be used as a springboad for innovation. Key to this is the creation of systems to help teachers help each other through online sharing of materials created by teachers and companies.
Putting an effective teacher in every classroom would lead to the US closing the achievement gap in only three years and becoming the most successful educational system in the world. However, research suggests that the kind of teaching certification teachers hold makes no difference and neither does seniority after three years in the profession. What really makes a difference is the past performance of the teacher - it's the best indicator of effective teaching and strong student outcomes. However, in the US past-performance is not rewarded.
The Foundation is engaged in a huge research project to identify the features of effective teachers, asking pupils questions like,"do your teachers do things to move you?" They are using the wisdom of practictioners to work out how to use the results and are interested in creating career ladders so great teachers can stay in the classroom but also lead. They are also working on how to assign the best teachers to students with the greatest needs.
Phillips mentioned the following schools as examples of what the Foundation is trying to achieve:
Part of the drive to enhance teacher practice involves innovations in the use of technology.The T3 system allows teachers to be in multiple places at once in the classroom. Teachers can assign different tasks to different groups using virtual cartoon avatars of the teacher, complete with audio recordings of instructions and assignments. This is leading to what Phillips described as a personalised 'playlist' of activities.
The Foundation is using investment to catalyse re-engagement with the teaching profession so that they know how inportant they are. Phillips pointed out that this cannot happen without teachers - the best model is to have pupils with adults every day and the idea of children learning on their own, connected to computers, will not work. They are working to support the 'traditional' system and also to think about new models.
To conclude, Phillips focused on several important factors:
- relentlessness - focus on teaching and learning because this is what makes the most difference
- scarcity - rebuild what we value the most, despite budget cuts
- productive struggle - the US is not very good at this. The search for consensus often waters down the best ideas
- Live in the 'and' - for example, we need to support good teachers and remove poor ones - it's not either/or, it's both.
The key task of leadership identified by Phillips is managing these tensions and the Foundation is based on the principle - "you do it, we will help."
Kevin Mulryne
