ADMIN or AS-A-SERVICE EDUCATION

In an idea economy, triple-loop pedagogy, immersive education and digital transformation is the next-generation learning paradigm within which public-sector education join the idea economy and resolve multi-layered strategic drift. Attention to this is important because public or state education is under assault from an array of nimble and mobilised threats. That being, single-loop education paradigm, which focuses on churning volumes of students through fact-based and or low-level curriculum - as driven through large-class direct-teaching pedagogical practices – as performance managed through a year-in-lag-post-learning assessment data - is an easy target. As a self-reinforcing system, the inert forces and dominant philosophies of the centuries old paradigm require radical overall to be fit for purpose for genuine sector-wide technological transformation.

In international terms, and whereas the long-standing government can be highly commended for achieving remarkable international rankings for political-stability and praised for deregulating a heavy regulatory environment, creating now an internationally renowned economy, New Zealand has slumped further down Global Innovation rankings to 21st.

This symbolises a need, with a very small population and economy, to maximise every aspect of populous for diversified opportunity (to bolster Dairy and Tourism as masthead sectors) and productivity quality, this has corresponded to a slump to 17th in the world for human capital development and knowledge diffusion.

So-called education transformers continue to deliver a range of “mindless” anti-public sector education messages. Including a recent anti-assessment focus, these proclaim stasis exists within the public education system, but stop short of specifying the root causes of the issue. Whereas it could be argued stasis exists (as an observed symptom), where the public-sector education proposition has become a threat to itself, the perception of stagnation has also given rise to the so-called education transformers. As rogue agencies, feeding on the symptoms of education’s issues, and in contrast to tackling the root causes, they thrive on devaluing and generating dissonance (towards the public-sector offering). The purpose of this is solely to drive attention towards their self-interest, heavy self-aggrandising puffery and promotion of a a range of schemes including anti-assessment/easy employment propositions (which run the risk of generating welfare dependency and laze). Whereas zero educational and or societal evidence is put forward, this has contributed to focus then spurned online alternatives, digital-substitution, distracted focus away from the key issues and supported the spread of the seriously dangerous fad, in gamification.

Thus, although the government have invested multi-million in creating modern learning environments, the underpinning education practice methodologies and structures are yet to catch up. Indeed and in contrast, although one could argue that one of the major contributing factors is the diminishing investment in education. That being, since 2000, although the amount invested in education has remained static over two governments, there has been a significant reduction in expenditure on education from 11.91% (Approximately $ 51.5bn in 2000) to 5%, in 2016, when using GDP ($ 240bn) as a barometer of need.

The state of the system is such that as the national and student population in NZ has grown, the volume of Principals and Management in schools has decreased by x since. As a result, the sector’s responsiveness to emergent trend is limited by flattening out highly hierarchical institutional practice in favour of learning-organisation strategy, establishing strong environmental sensing mechanisms, as a front-line force of emergence. This is because the limitations of trickle-down is such that schools are not incentivised to develop strategic choice or education programmes as a factor of developing talent for any external environment considerations. They are limited with an internal focus as incentivised by developing school roll where past-academic results are the marketed means.

As a result and as student populous has grown, teachers have increased from 42,066 in 2004 to 48,721 in 2017. Characterising the limitations of the incentive structure, as other countries have modernised their education systems, NZ places 58th in the world[1] for large teacher-student ratio’s through the dominant direct-teaching model which still employed (visa vie chalk and talk) in many schools.

Of the $ 13.1bn invested in the system, 2017, conservative modelling of the system shows where digital technology adoption can dramatically transform and or resolve fundamental key obstacles in the system including:

1. Automation of near 12.1m hours of education time, or where 51% to 55% ($ 389m from the education budget) of the teaching role is consumed with administration of monster processes.

2. Create times to invoke new models of immersive-triple loop education

3. The use of IOT and or basic location-services (to manage the exceptions to) to resolve more than 1.1m+ hours education hours as consumed by teachers completing, up to 6 times a day, manual/paper based attendance registers and completing duplicated electronic versions.

4. Creating time, beyond increased pastoral and parental duties increasingly applied by teachers, to transform the balance of 33.5m hours of ‘teaching’ – to shift from single-loop to immersive, interdisciplinary, education – with industry credentials.

   1. Resolves equivalent of 7.7% or $1bn of the $13bn education investment offering on basic fact-based learning.

   2. Transformation of the NCEA assessment-centred performance driver [which shapes the dominant approaches in the system] into a internationally-benchmarked education system.

   3. Counter-anticipatory student-led intelligence systems to cater for “priority” and or tailor education for all and or wrongly labelled “priority leaners” (whose learning characteristics are not identifiable under a chalk-talk and or assessment-centred paradigm).

   4. Shifting from a direct-teacher which equates to:

   5. 2.89 hours per year of education-time, direct with a teacher, is the proportionate return for the $ 7500 invested in each secondary child.

To:

f. 24/7 adaptive content and facilitated personalised learning.

Digital adoption, as a catalyst to accelerating education strategy, programme design and pedagogy to triple-loop education, enabling resolution to the limited net return engaged state of students. The key problem address with this model equates to just 6million hours or 671,624 hours of actual learning state – or 0.15% of the original $ 13bn investment utilised for education. With shifts in the model, responses to New Zealand falling to 47th in the world for government expenditure per student (at a secondary level) become possible. This is important because the flow of talent into the system has slowed to a trickle, employment in knowledge intensive services has dropped to 28th in the world. The corresponding effect to be resolved, across all NZ sectors, equates to a slump to 58th in the world (as a percentage of GDP), with education’s spearheading the adoption of digital software innovation and or utilisation.

With Foreign investment in New Zealand flailing at 116th in the world, high and medium tech outputs featuring at 73rd in the world (just over 3% of GDP), High-tech exports at 64th and ICT exports at 75th in the world – the weak overall inbound and exported attractiveness justifies concerns the intergenerational impact of aged education model and participative performance drivers – as emergent opportunity rolls on.

Adoption of digital, to support triple-loop education, in public-sector education breaks down the perception of a lack of modernity and ill-fated responses such as online-assessment. Thus, preservation of the current state inadvertently devalues the overall credibility and career-attractiveness of the profession, spurning industry-experiences and or new talent from entering. Sluggish approaches or inaction self-reinforces the teacher-crisis as exasperated by the rejection of performance-pay by unions (which is arguably the biggest threat to the relevancy of the union, it’s subscription revenues and system itself). As genuine and demonstrable evidence of change is not evident at a socio-economic layer, the effect offers government’s little rationale to inject risk or new capital. These combine as systemic threats to the ongoing value proposition of public education.

Additionally, because schools act as standalone entities, not incentivised to produce talent or outcomes for full system, NZ, development, the sophistication of ‘how’ technology investment in education is utilised at a school level, are key factors that result in creating the perception that the system that remains preserved in a ‘jar of time’. This transcends into traditional approaches to funding IT in schools and how IT is procured in schools.

As the performance driver is based on fact-based learning and as there is no digital-development funding mechanism built into the education grant, learning quality improvement for digital enablement is based on a schools eagerness to be “seen to go digital”. The consequence of this is that, more often than not, they are peddled race-to-the-bottom technology by unscrupulous vendors. As a sunk cost, they become increasingly susceptible to the ‘go all cloud’ pitch as “it’s cheaper”. However, the “all-cloud” approach disables a school’s ability to adopt sophisticated technologies necessary for a shift in performance driver towards immersive, industrially-credible, learner-focused and or interdisciplinary education. At a classroom or programme level, this means school days remain constrained to large-class size, short multi-period/lessons and stand-alone subject delivery. As an example, in 2016, New Zealand students spent over 3 million education hours the wandering around school yards, between lessons. A further 19 million education hours, or $0.5bn of education investment, was eroded where students re-focused or shifted their engaged state from lesson or from one engaged state to another. Teachers, particularly in practical-based education, consumed .. up to 25% of short-lessons, “setting-up” and then quick-fire-basic activates, then closing down as the multi-period days presents challenges in anything useful being accomplished.

The implication is that STEM and or contextual integrated interdisciplinary learning, the mainstay of New Zealand’s socio-economic development opportunity, more-sophisticated, fair and equitable learning and or student-career development - but based on resolving the international innovation and national talent-throughput crisis, are rendered incompatible.

Talent gets sucked into the prevailing institutions, preventing ‘‘outside the box’’ innovation from taking root, especially in those firms that might be expected to challenge the strategic approaches, services, products and or ecology of dominant institutions.

Thus - to defend against the threats to relevancy of public sector education, to renew and modernise, education leaders, boards and Principals (existing and aspiring) of the public education sector are challenged to shift education and institutions from an education operating paradigm (that persists from an era when computers never existed) – to adopt digital– by employing technologies coupled with institutional transformation. This is to create new educational performance drivers which support higher order education as this necessary to address New Zealand’s mounting talent development challenges. By bringing together digital adoption, a demonstrably transformative or change-orientated public-sector education presents serious rationale for the government to invest in education which includes a new-pay-performance value proposition; to bring attractiveness to the teaching profession.

Accordingly, responsive public education institutions will either become highly responsive and adept at digital transformation and will thrive in an emergent idea economy – or will fail to master the necessary disciplines for modernity and struggle to survive, particularly with standard roll development drivers, fanning the fire of so-called transformation outfits and or as the differentiated schools do otherwise.

To accomplish change, Leaders and executive management in schools need to dedicate time to contributing to the regeneration of the New Zealand education system, by transforming their philosophies and internal environments. this includes drawing attention to the implications to learning and digital of direct-teaching models and post-learning-assessment, which combine to drive a degenerative education performance driver (to the lowest and most ineffective levels of “learning”) for young learners. All actors need to work together to locate a sense of legitimacy and renew the relevancy of the state education value proposition in order to modernise and adopt digital with a threefold immediate focus:

1. To mitigate the risk of becoming obsolete and uninvestable, in era of growing online alternatives.

2. To re-establish the credibility of NCEA and qualifications in the midst of so-called market transformers or interventionists who promote an erosion to the worth of qualifications.

3. To avoid digital substitutions and or race-to-the bottom technology adoption (inc. BYOD) and or the disappointment from “all-cloud” sensationalism.

4. To better understand the role of strategic-ICT approaches, as-a-service and..

Solutions

With technology changing rapidly, and as funding for digital adoption is not yet built into the education grant, it makes for pragmatic economic sense for schools to adopt a regional perspective – utilise ‘as-a-service’ to optimise cash flows and as the same time increases strategic agility (to cope for future change). One of the solutions to do this is to unlock digital potential from as ‘education-as-a-service’ technologies, not only via public cloud, but better served by the interoperability and agility of Hybrid on premise technologies.

On this basis, institutions can consume the necessary digital services, tools and automation facilities in a way to transform legacy environments, catch up, keep up and fuel new education innovation. With IOT in particular, institutions are able to obtain a Realtime and demonstrable counter-anticipatory picture on how education spaces can be shaped to the benefit of learning styles, behaviour and different intelligences. Furthermore, IOT, with a regional focus, enables schools to automate and add intelligence for new-service provision, maximising how education-assets (such as land, sports facilities and or community-spaces) can be utilised by the community.

From an educational standpoint, these ‘as-a-service’ provisions enable leaders, programme heads and teachers to develop deep-student centred learning, … content, student engagement and assessment tools that operate 24/7 and in a real-time manner. As the impact of administration is virtually eroded, this provides:

1. Significantly enhanced learner development.

2. The ability to invoke triple-loop learning with immersive, personalised and real-time intelligence on learning development.

3. A heightened professional status for teacher role

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[1] Global Innovation Index