Harvard Graduate School of Education - Leadership: an Evolving Vision 2007

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Jim Honan led this morning’s session on “Change That Leads to Improvement”.

He explored how there is growing interest in the social return we gain from the investment we make in the education system.

The model he shared was the “Program Logic Model” derived from the Kellog Foundation.

The model goes as follows:

1. Resources —-2. Activities—-3. Outputs—-4. Outcomes—-5. Impact

I was particularly interested in stages 3, 4 and 5.

Outputs are the descriptive statistics, e.g. % attendance; courses run; number of participants; hours spent on an activity.

Outcomes describe what changed, e.g. attainment went up from x% to y%; attendance decreased; bullying incidents went up.

Impact is where we make some judgement about how successful our original vision might have been - the “so what question”

I recall a very interesting meeting I had with Rick Segal - a Canadian Venture Capitalist - back in October, where he had interrogated me by constantly drilling into the outcomes and impact of my practice in a very uncomfortable manner.

It was whilst listening to Jim Honan that I was struck by the possibility of reframing how we consider impact and how we might better link actions and measures of success.

The typical planning  process in Scottish education goes something like this:

1. AIM  e.g. Improve the health of young people 

2. ACTION  2 hours of weekly PE

3. MEASURE Provide 2 hours of PE each week

The problem with this approach is that our measures - which are derived from the action - can be disconnected from the aim, i.e. PE does not necessarily mean that health is improved - even if it’s high quality PE. The other problem associated with this example is that the measure is an output not an outcome

If I was funder and was putting money into the system to fulfil my aim, i.e. to improve health - then being told that all kids were now doing 2 hours of PE each week would not convince me that I’m getting a good social return on my investment.

So what if we considered an alternative relationship between these three factors?

1. Aim - Improve health

3. Measure - Children can run for 12 minutes without stopping

2. Action - Design and implement programmes which will improve children’s CV fitness.

By selecting a much more specific measure and linking it with the aim - prior to deciding upon what the action might be - we come up with a potentially more powerful change model which is very much directed towards IMPACT.

If you want to try this challenge have go at providing me with an aim, measure and action for making children more responsible citizens - remember your measure must be able to answer the funders’ “so what” question about any actions you take, i.e. can you demonstrate impact (not just an output)