As a follow up to my blog on Quality Control and Kids, I would like to share with you a little from the life and work of Dr Demming.

Recognition:
In 1960, the Prime Minister of Japan (Nobusuke Kishi), acting on behalf of Emperor Hirohito, awarded Deming Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class. The citation on the medal recognises Deming's contributions to Japan's industrial rebirth and its worldwide success.
In 1980, he was featured prominently in an NBC TV documentary titled "If Japan can... Why can't we?" about the increasing industrial competition the United States was facing from Japan. As a result of the broadcast, demand for his services increased dramatically, and Deming continued consulting for industry throughout the world until his death at the age of 93.
Over the course of his career, Deming received dozens of academic awards, including another, honorary, PhD from Oregon State University. In 1987, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Reagan: "For his forceful promotion of statistical methodology, for his contributions to sampling theory, and for his advocacy to corporations and nations of a general management philosophy that has resulted in improved product quality." In 1988, he received the Distinguished Career in Science award from the National Academy of Sciences.

Teachings:
"A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management. A psychologist that possesses even a crude understanding of variation as will be learned in the experiment with the Red Beads could no longer participate in refinement of a plan for ranking people.”

"There is no substitute for knowledge." This statement emphasises the need to know more, about everything in the system. It replaces "There is no substitute for hard work" by Thomas Alva Edison with, a small amount of knowledge could save many hours of hard work.

"Experience by itself teaches nothing." To Deming, knowledge is best taught by a master who explains the overall system through which experience is judged; experience, without understanding the underlying system, is just raw data that can be misinterpreted against a flawed theory of reality. Deming's view of experience is related to Shewhart's concept, "Data has no meaning apart from its context”.

Deming used an illustration of washing a table to teach a lesson about the relationship between purpose and method. If you tell someone to wash a table, but not the reason for washing it, they cannot do the job properly (will the table be used for chopping food or potting plants?). That does not mean just giving the explanation without an operational definition. The information about why the table needs to be washed, and what is to be done with it, makes it possible to do the job intelligently.

"You can expect what you inspect." Deming emphasised the importance of measuring and testing to predict typical results. If a phase consists of inputs + process + outputs, all 3 are inspected to some extent. Problems with inputs are a major source of trouble, but the process using those inputs can also have problems. By inspecting the inputs and the process more, the outputs can be better predicted, and inspected less. Rather than use mass inspection of every output product, the output can be statistically sampled in a cause-effect relationship through the process.

The 4 steps in the Deming Cycle: 
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), also known as Plan-Do-Study-Act or PDSA. Deming called the cycle the Shewhart Cycle, after Walter A. Shewhart. The cycle can be used in various ways, such as running an experiment: 
350px-PDCA Cycle.svg

PLAN (design) the experiment; 
DO the experiment by performing the steps; 
CHECK the results by testing information; 
ACT on the decisions based on those results.

"A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system. . . . The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition.”

Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system - has the effect of making things worse. With the best of intentions and best efforts, managing by results is, in effect, exactly the same as driving your automobile by keeping your eye on the rear view mirror. And that's what management by results is, keeping your eye on results.”

Deming realised that many important things that must be managed couldn’t be measured. Deming is often incorrectly quoted as saying, "You can't manage what you can't measure." In fact, he stated that one of the seven deadly diseases of management is running a company on visible figures alone.

​Here’s the problem as I see it with today’s education policies. Businesses and governments are accountable - to stock holders and to voters. In the business world you can usually find a correlation between what you put into a business and what you get out of it.
In a business model, you ensure quality raw materials, resources and components go in as inputs. In doing so, you can be reasonably sure the outputs will also be of good quality, fit for purpose, and able to show a return on investment.
Governments, particularly those supported by businesses, want to be able to show returns on investment. They want to be able to measure what went in, measure what comes out and then provide a “value for money return on investment” statement. 
Governments have turned their attention to education and are seeking to apply the same principles.

Dr W Edwards Demming was brought in by the Japanese government after WW2 to look at their management systems and processes. He looked at their system of performance pay and famously set up an example for Captains of Industry. Dr Demming put a smaller number of red balls into a box with a larger number of white balls. “Workers” were invited to step up and blindly choose a ball. If they picked a red one they got a performance bonus. If they chose a white one, no reward. 
His point was, the workers had no control over the outcome.
In simple terms, Dr Demming taught these Japanese Captains of Industry that: 
     they had to devolve responsibility to the workers for their performance
     they had to listen to the person doing the job rather than bring in analysts and time and   
      motion experts
     they needed to make everyone responsible for improvement 
     they needed to share the performance rewards with everyone involved
     teams working as teams would always outperform individuals competing for rewards
     invest in your teams and your individuals
     show loyalty

In specific terms, Deming’s 14 Points on Quality Management:
     Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
     Adopt the new philosophy.
     Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
     End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimise total cost by   
     working with a single supplier.
     Improve constantly and forever, every process for planning, production and service.
     Institute training on the job.
     Adopt and institute leadership.
     Drive out fear.
     Break down barriers between staff areas.
     Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
     Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
     Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or 
     merit system.
     Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
     Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

After WW1 the economies of Germany and Italy collapsed. The Deutsche Mark and the Lira were worth nothing. They blamed the rest of the world, got angry and went to back to war.
After WW2 Japan was demoralised and defeated. It also faced the aftermath of two nuclear bombs falling on two of its leading cities. They did not blame the rest of the world, get angry and go back to war. They sought advice, got thinking and got to work.
Japan’s economy did not collapse. In fact, Japan’s economy soon outpaced America’s. Japan soon led the world as an industrialised nation. 
Dr W Edwards Demming is revered by the Japanese nation, and the Japanese people. America did eventually realise they had missed the bus, but the practices at so many major corporations were the antithesis of Demming’s Total Qulaity Management, that America’s economy all but collapsed. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Goldman Sachs - all these massive corporations ended up in impossible debt and disfunction because they ignored Demming’s TQM. 
Instead they followed a culture of paying obscenely massive benefits and bonuses to their CEOs and managers - even when their companies made massive losses. Now those same - Goldman Sachs for example - executives are working for the US government, employed by Bush, and pushing the same ideology that got America into such an horrific mess.

So back to the problem as I see it, with education. Ministry and government officials want to pay teachers for their performance. Think back to Demming’s example. You reach in blindly and if you get the red ball…
It’s the same principle here. 
What if teacher A gets three children with Attention Deficit Disorder, one with Hyperactivity, one Foetal Alcohol syndrome child, one spoilt child who has no boundaries at home, two freshly arrived refugee children with no English, 15 local children who have English as their second or third language, seven children who have not been to pre school and - well you get the picture.
There are many, many classrooms where this is a typical intake.

Teacher B meanwhile receives 18 children because their school can afford to lower class sizes due to financial support from their community. Those 18 children are predominantly New Zealand European. They have all been to pre-school, they all have books in their homes, they all have had language-rich experiences as they grew up, they all have learned their alphabet, colours and numbers to 20 before starting school. Their parents are educated, have good jobs and high expectations.
There are many, many classrooms where this is a typical intake.

So for the sake of society as well as the sake of the children, which children need the better teacher?
Would it be fair to say the children in Teacher B’s class are going to progress beautifully whether Teacher B is any good or not?
Would it be fair to say Teacher A could work her fingers to the bone and still have a number of children making limited progress?
Are the non problematical children in Teacher A’s class going to be able to focus and get the best Teacher A has to offer if she is constantly “managing” the challenging children?

Take this one step further. What if you are the parent od a special needs child? Is a teacher going to want to teach your child if it is going to put their performance bonus at risk by having your child in their class?

Each child we have the blessing to educate is unique. Each child, according to Sir Ken Robinson, “is a fountain of possibilities.” Children can’t be considered to be outputs. As teachers we must cultivate the right conditions for learning; we must find each child’s passion, talent, and creativity. As teachers we must capitalise on the great diversity in our schools and guide young people to find their talents with the goal of using these to positively contribute to society.
I am not opposed to accountability. Data informs planning and  instruction, but I think many have misinterpreted assessment and how it should be used. The word assess comes from the Latin verb assidire - to sit beside. Instead of doling out test papers, we need to be sitiing beside our learners, having personal conversations about what they know, what they want to know and how to scaffold between the two. 
Hattie’s research is unequivocal - relationships between learner and teacher; constructive, personalised feed back and feed forward; are what make the difference.
Drill and test achieves nothing lasting but may provide data to keep Ministers and voters happy if they do not know any better.
Demming proved that performance pay as the government is promoting, will not work because we must take individual differences, developmental differences, and life experiences into account.

There is no assessment that can accurately assess all children.
There is no one-size-fits-all test, fix, or easy way to measure student academic performance. It is difficult, challenging and messy work. We must abandon the idea that we can fix education with more money, a new program, or a piece of legislation. We can’t legislate learning any more than we can legislate love. Learning is organic, it happens when passion meets opportunity, when a great teacher creates an amazing experience for students to embrace.

Our children need the very best teachers we can provide. Our future rests in the hands of these children who will take over our world - the world we are leaving them is fraught with massive challenges such as we have not confronted before. To face those challenges our children need to be well taught - not just in reading, writing and math, but in thinking, caring, creating, contributing, collaborating, communicating, persisting, and in particular, discerning.

Right now we need discerning people to stand up and say performance pay for teachers is not the answer.
We need to apply Demming’s principles, and Sir Ken Robinson’s.

Sometimes we can worry about change. We think about the way things were and how they worked for us. The world our children live in and one day will work in, is very very different from the one we grew up in. The speed of change is exponential, and we need to be changing with our world and preparing our children for a world of change.  Change  requires  an  evolution  of  thinking  that  can  offer  new possibilities for continued greatness ahead. 
One change we must emphasise is ensuring the focus is more than just on academic achievement, but rather on Whole Child growth and development.
When we state “Whole Child,” we are specifically addressing the development of the social, emotional, physical and academic development of each student.
A  Whole  Child  approach,  which  ensures  that  each  student  is  healthy,  safe,  engaged, supported, and challenged, sets the standard for comprehensive, sustainable school improvement and provides for long-term student success.
Whole Child Education Expectations: 
• Each child enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy  lifestyle. 
• Each child learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for all. 
• Each child owns their learning and contributes to a close personal connection with our school         and their community.
• Each child has access to personalised learning and is supported by caring, qualified adults. 
• Each child is challenged academically and nurtured individually to prepare them for success  in life.
Skills for the 21st Century: 
“The rigour that matters most for the 21st century is demonstrated mastery of the core competencies for work, citizenship, and life-long learning. Studying academic content is the means for developing competencies, instead of being the goal, as it has been traditionally. "In today’s world, it’s no longer how much you know that matters; it’s what you can do with what you know.” -- Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap 
The success of our children is dependent upon our ability to teach them 21st century skills: 
    Collaborative Team Member
    Effective Communicator
    Globally Aware, Active, and Responsible Student/Citizen
    Information Literate Researcher
    Innovative and Practical Problem Solver
    Self‐Directed Learner. 
“As educators, school leaders, and policymakers, we exist in a world where too often assessment equals high-stakes tests. This is a very limited view of assessment. The fundamental purpose of assessment is the improvement of student achievement, teaching practice, and leadership decision-making.” Douglas Reeves, Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Assessment to Transform Teaching and Learning. 

We believe all students should participate in Music. This year we have implemented a school-wide music programme that has given every child a taste of how engaging and empowering participation in music can be. Mark McLay our Marvellous Music Maestro describes it as opening their eyes to a world of challenging fun. The value in their participation goes far beyond the act of playing any specific instrument. The value lies in the skills they learn in performance, practice, and participation in a group. Playing an instrument activates both sides of the brain. It teaches the value of effort and achievement. It teaches appreciation for the arts. I want to publicly thank Mark for the magnificent job he has done with this programme, it has added a wonderful new dimension to learning at WHS.

Our Vision is for our children to Love to Learn to Lead. This is a whole child vision. 
We want our children to Love themselves, to be strong in themselves, resilient and confident in what they can do and what they can learn.
We want our children to Love each other - to be a part of a caring and contributing family. Bucket-Fillers who make a difference in their world by Paying It Forward. One of the most important ways we show our love for our family is by listening - a skill for the ages.
We want our children to Love our world. It’s the only one we’ve got, there is certainly not another in the Universe that we are aware of or could reach, so we must look after it with love and care.
We want our children to Love to Learn. Learning gives us power over our world, our circumstances and our future. It offers us options and opportunities that we would not have without it. Learning is for life.
We want our children to Lead. 
With our WHS values, our children are well set to lead - in their own lives as they set goals, develop action plans, identify what success looks like and reflect on how they went and where they go next. 
In the lives of others as they set the standard for others to aspire to. In their world as they live leadership through what they do rather than what they say.

“As educators, our responsibilities are to support our children in pursuit of their learning, to support our children in pursuit of their dreams, and to support our children in pursuit of imagining successes not already conceived. 

We must do all we can to meet our responsibility to develop the “Whole Child, Every Child.” 
Therefore, we will continually reflect on all that we do to ensure we meet all the needs of these wonderful young people entrusted into our care, and support them to the best of our ability in order that they will Love to Learn to Lead.

Recently a large gathering of primary and secondary school principals from all over New Zealand met with the Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, and the internationally renowned educational researcher and scholar, Professor Andy Hargreaves, formerly of Great Britain and now at Boston College, Massachusetts. Professor Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. The mission of the Chair is to promote social justice and connect theory and practice in education. 

The focus of this gathering was to launch a debate on “The Purpose of Education” in New Zealand. Some wonderful thinking, discussion, and idea sharing resulted, and I would like to share the best bits with you as I think this is an important topic for us to reflect on as parents, as teachers and educational leaders, and as a learning community focussed on doing the best we possibly can to educate, guide, prepare and support our children to become lifelong learners.

I was asked to reflect on the question, “if there was only one thing Western Heights could achieve for its children by the time they leave here, what would it be?
There are so many answers that come to mind - giving children a sense of self-worth, teaching them empathy, guiding them to become independent leaders of their own learning, helping them to be resilient and persistent… and many more.

In the end, I settled for embedding in them a love of learning that reaches down to the cellular level. A love of learning means that you will want to and love to learn about - first yourself; second others; third your world. 
Life-long learning about yourself will help you understand the importance of believing in yourself, having courage, confidence, resilience and persistence (among many other qualities).
Life-long learning about others will help you become empathetic (as you will learn not to judge others without first understanding them), cooperative, collaborative, and a team player (among many other qualities).
Life-long learning about your world will help you to be a caring, concerned and connected citizen. It will lead you to care more for your world as you understand and value the beauty, wonder, and finiteness of its resources.
We want to grow Learners who Love to Learn, Learn to Lead. Our WHS school Mission is “Love to Learn to Lead.”
If we can find ways to hook children into learning, and grow in them an ever-deepening passion for learning, so many of the challenges they (and our society) will face, will be overcomable.

Passion is an oft overused word, but I can assure you that I am passionate about achieving this goal, as are our staff.
As our Minister, Hekia Parata, stated, “Anyone not passionate about causing learning to happen should get out of the education business. I don’t want miserable people around our children, or around you,” she said.

It’s all very well being passionate about learning and growing Learners who Love to Learn and Learn to Lead, but passion has to be accompanied by action. 
A dream without a plan is empty after all.

For me, this brings in the power, purpose and possibility of the new Four R’s.
The original 3 R’s were reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic - a bit of a worry just in the name.
The new Four R’s are the means by which we ensure Reading, Writing, Mathematics and all the other wonderful components of our New Zealand Curriculum are taught, understood and mastered. They are the tools by which a passion for growing learners who Love to Learn to Lead becomes reality.

The Four R’s are:
Relationships - giving our children an opportunity to love and be loved. Treating every child in our care as our own flesh and blood.
Relevance - making sure children can make a connection to their learning through real-world/their-world contexts. Through this comes engagement, a sense of purpose, focus and a love of learning.
Rigour - is causing learning to happen, and knowing that it did. It is the analysis, assessment, discussion, conferencing, feed-back and feed-forward that allows us to know that learning has taken root, has been made into meaning, and become a part of the learner.
Reflection - requires the constant and consistent review of what we did, why we did it and what resulted. Reflection allows us to grow, to improve, to be better than before, and to understand the big picture around our learning.
The President of the NZ Principals’ Federation recently had this to say:                               
Our New Zealand teachers are world class professionals right across the deciles as proclaimed by the OECD recently. The close relationships our public schools have with our local communities mean that community aspirations and values create a context for each school's unique curriculum. This allows schools to continually adapt and change in response to demands for new skills. New Zealand schools can thus remain ahead of the game. Whilst much of the rest of the world is still immersed in standard methods of teaching and testing. New Zealand has leapt ahead into inquiry learning and teaching, problem-solving, critical thinking, self-management of learning and other innovative approaches.

'Our statement of purpose for education will inevitably involve knowledge and skills, it will also involve a range of values and competencies reflecting our growing cultural diversity, our environmental concerns, the need for equity, fairness and justice, inclusiveness and the desire to see our children grow into responsible, compassionate and contributing, global citizens.' 

In addressing "The Purpose of Education’ Minister Parata said that education is a 'powerful... social platform for excellence so that people can participate in the economy and grow in prosperity and cultural awareness. Minister Parata insisted the purpose of schools is to cause learning to happen and know that it did. 

She acknowledged that teaching was a complex and challenging job because it requires finding out how learning happens for each child. She spoke of the collapse of time and distance with the bright new digital world but quickly added that whether you are talking about the business of schools or of governments, the greatest influence comes from good quality leadership. 

Professor Hargreaves stated, "There are two discussion trends world-wide, progress and direction - how you are doing and where you are going. 
Professor Hargreaves’s purpose points to ponder were:                                                                      
Citizens cannot maintain both ignorance and freedom                                                                   
Education should be paid for, controlled and maintained by the public                                        
Education is provided in schools that embrace children from varying backgrounds                                        
Education should be non-sectarian                                                                                               
Education should be taught using the tenets of a free society.                                                           
Education should be provided by well-trained, professional teachers  
Cheryl Doig is a Futurist. She was the first principal to win the Goodman Fielder Wattie School of the Year award while at Richmond School in Christchurch. I have worked with Cheryl many times over the years and she is inspiring, challenging and an educational visionary.                                                                                                                                       
In addressing the purpose of education, Dr Cheryl Doig who works as a 'Futures Consultant' said there are more questions than answers. Whilst we want to value the past, it must be acknowledged that we are heading in a very different place now and that place is driven by technology and globalisation, not by learning to read, write and get a job.                             
Education will be a life-long learning process, according to Cheryl Doig, and school is just a small part of that.         
The world is changing at such a rate that you cannot have a school or university curriculum that is not instantly changeable. Our current system is not broken, she said. It works quite adequately for what it was designed for. The thing is, we must call time on that era. As Sir Paul Callaghan once said, 'New Zealand must become a city of four million people, a country where talent wants to live.’                                                                                           
It was also important to note the changing nature of work with 47 per cent of jobs that exist right now being capable of automation. The kids of today, therefore, need multiple opportunities to prepare them for a successful future because many will be in jobs that don't exist yet whilst many jobs that exist today will have disappeared. 
Professor Andrew Hargreaves summarised at the end. He noted the ideas and sentiments which principals repeated many times, including that we want the statement of the purpose for education to be bold, specific, holistic, encapsulating diversity, clear, inspiring, courageous, inclusive, passionate, bicultural, apolitical, collaborative, global, sharing, demonstrating professional ownership and reflecting New Zealand Curriculum.         
Further sentiments also echoed by the speakers included dignity, identity, ubiquity, authority, inquiry and intervention.                                                                                                        
Professor Hargreaves noted that 'if you don't know who you are, you are not self-confident enough to succeed.’ 
I am confident our WHS children are developing a very strong and clear sense of who they are, why learning is important and rewarding, and how they can lead in their own lives, with others, and in their world. This is our purpose in education, and your support, encouragement, engagement and commitment is greatly appreciated as it makes all the difference.