Global ambitions, individual lives
Tamara Minick-Scokalo, President of Pearson's Growth Markets writes about Pearson's contribution to the Global Partnership for Education.
July 09, 2014 by Tamara Minick-Scokalo, Pearson
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9 minutes read
Credit: GPE/Jawad Jalali

(This blog was previously published at Pearson.com.)

Few centuries can match the 20th for the speed of human progress – hundreds of millions lifted from poverty, killer diseases eradicated, whole new sectors of work created; a world that has been brought closer by the necessities to survive, but also our instinct to connect.

Nowhere has the impact of this globalization been felt more positively than education. Schooling, once a matter for local communities, has become a global debate amongst governments around the world, aware that the quality of their education systems are directly linked to their ability to perform in the connected marketplace.

But it’s a global perspective that sometimes brings alarming statistics to the fore; like the fact that 58 million children do not attend primary school (31 million of whom are girls). Or that 250 million children around the world cannot read, write or count well, even after four years of school.

It is challenges like these which are the focus of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), an international collaboration of governments, teachers, and public, not-for-profit and private organizations that is helping developing countries to improve their education systems.

The Global Partnership is just one example of the globalization of education in action. Schools, policy makers and governments around the world now learn from each other, through open data benchmark studies such as PISA and TIMMS (and also I hope through our own contribution to this body of insight – The Learning Curve); via formal and informal collaborations between organizations; and at an individual level, through digital communities across the internet and social media. We need them to continue to do so – and to do more of it.

This shift in education, from local to national to global, is changing the things our company is working on, and where we’re working. For example, we’re developing a new school qualification, that is not only recognized around the world, but tests the skills that young people need to have to succeed in this international jobs market.

Doing such things isn’t just about us interpreting the big-picture trends we’re witnessing. It’s also about responding to what we’re hearing first-hand from our customers.

When we talk to our English language students in Brazil or China, what is striking is the demand for a different sort of English learning experience – one that is less about the traditional formality of grammar, and more about equipping them with the practical verbal skills that will let them work around the world.

This globalization of education could not have happened were it not for technology. The internet brought us all together, and then created the conditions and attitudes for a multitude of new teaching and learning platforms to emerge. The concept of the traditional four-walled classroom is feeling increasingly old-fashioned – technology has not only transformed how children learn, but who they learn with, and where.

Yet for all the billions of dollars spent globally on new hardware, the evidence that technology actually makes us learn more effectively remains frustratingly scarce.

Why? Perhaps it is because, as Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, puts it: “Technology can leverage great teaching; technology can’t displace poor teaching”.

As developing countries race to invest more of their GDP than ever before into education, they are aiming to avoid the pitfalls others have experienced, and instead to improve achievement faster.

How can Pearson help?

Nearly two years ago, we started a process to marshal all our different products and our people around one simple idea – that we need to shift from focusing on inputs (what people use to teach and learn) to outcomes (what are we helping people do better than before?).  We have committed to making learning outcomes data public for all our major products and services by 2018; and using the same data to test any new investment we make. If we can’t clearly see how a new product or service will drive up learning outcomes, we won’t invest in it.

If the globalization of education is really going to be of benefit, policy-makers also need to adopt a far more transparent, evidence driven, outcomes culture.

As a global community we are rightly eager to celebrate progress. Statistics that tell us that the rate of out-of-school children has fallen by 15% in GPE countries since 2000, while primary-school completion rates rose by 18% is something we should be proud about. But the fact that far more pupils are now in school than a decade ago is in itself not enough, without the evidence that it’s having an impact. New educational products, services and policies are regularly announced with no real discussion of the outcomes they will lead to. Pupil-teacher ratios or funding for schools attract media debate, yet little attention is given to literacy, numeracy, employability or other ‘outcome’ metrics.

But those outcomes are what really counts.

This ‘outcomes’ agenda – something at Pearson we’re calling ‘efficacy’ – is also driving the Global Partnership’s new results-based financing model. By incentivizing the measurement of learning outcomes and achievement in national education plans, this model addresses one of the most important trends that we see in education – to ensure our children are in school AND learning the skills to succeed and thrive.

Recently, all members of the Global Partnership for Education gathered to renew their pledges for what they can bring to the table. For us, it is this; that over the next three years, Pearson will work with developing countries in the Global Partnership's family to help them define learning outcomes that are consistent with the goals of their national education plans. We will commit to reviewing 10 countries per year in person, and train up to 20 countries to do their own mini-reviews.

As the global community grows ever bigger, it can also sometimes feel more anonymous. We should never forget that the purpose of learning is ultimately about making individual lives better; education that teaches a young woman in Saudi Arabia a new skill; education that helps a teenager in Brazil get a better job; education that enriches the learning, knowledge and lives of pupils from Lagos to New York to Shanghai.

That’s why we should never lose sight of what motivated the very first founders of schools – that by building better places to learn, we create better places to live in.

I’m proud that Pearson can make a small contribution to that process, alongside our Global Partnership for Education partners.

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