The European Problem

Most North Americans misunderstand the crisis in Europe. They think it is about profligate governments being forced to cut spending so as to deal with the challenges of debt. It is not. It is much more complex.

The first challenge is indeed economic. It is about the lack of economic growth in European countries other than Germany. This includes countries within and beyond the Eurozone – the countries using the euro as their currency. Britain lacks growth and it is economically challenged.

Growth was the “bet” governments made when making decisions about social policy, energy and their public spending. They now find themselves growing not only less than anticipated but less than they have been used to. Revenues to government are therefore falling while their costs are growing. This is one source of public debt.

A second source of public debt is generous social service provision. With very high rates of unemployment and an ageing population, European social provisions are now becoming very expensive. France, with the least number of working hours and working life of any country, has a growing unemployment problem. Spain has 27% unemployment, with the 16-24 year olds looking like a “lost generation” with unemployment for this group at 50%. Each retired and unemployed person is a significant cost to benevolent states – costs they can no longer afford.

A third source of public debt is the systematic transfer of private debt to the public purse. Here the financial sector, which is largely responsible for a great deal of the economic mess the world now finds itself facing. Banks in many European countries are poorly regulated and over extended with risk debts, which now look unlikely to mature. Spanish banks have been downgraded by bond rating agencies due to their exposure to risk debt and many French financial institutions are equally vulnerable. So as to stop a bank depositor exit, Governments are acting to assume responsibility for bank debt, thereby transferring private risk to the public purse. No one wants to see any major national bank collapse.

The final source of public debt is public policy. The policy of austerity, forced on the Eurozone and accepted by almost all of Europe (Britain and Czech republic saw sense and said no) is itself a source of public debt. By reducing the scale of government, cutting public spending and forcing austerity through taxation, government revenues fall and spending power within national markets is reduced. In the case of Greece, austerity will kill the State before it will lead provide the basis for the State to respond. As Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winning economist noted, the adoption of the “fiskalunion” by the majority of the members of the EU is equivalent to a suicide pact – a view supported by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, another Nobel laureate.

This is the economic context. It is in itself challenging, but the challenge for Europe is more complex.

A second factor at the heart of the European challenge is the demography of Europe. With the exception of Britain, Europe is experiencing a demographic deficit. Most countries – especially Germany and Italy – are experiencing low birth rates and the longevity of its older population. Italy and several regions of Germany are not replacing themselves and are now experiencing more deaths than live births. Many married couples are not having children and the economic conditions do not encourage them to do so. Regions of Europe are now finding that the elderly, unemployed and people not in work outnumber those in work, especially in Spain. The implications are economic – fewer people in work to pay taxes to support those not in work as well as a burgeoning underground economy – and social volatility. Many parts of Europe are political firecrackers ready to be lit and explode at a moments notice.

The third problem is energy. Energy costs are rising in Europe. This is almost entirely due to the adoption and pursuit of “green” policies. Germany is a classic case. Following the Japanese tsunami, the German government decided to decommission its nuclear energy provision and to adopt renewable energy as the replacement. This is likely to produce annual increases in base energy costs of 30% or more while at the same time giving rise to massive volatility in the energy system, producing unreliability. This is forcing several German companies to leave Germany and move production to lower costs energy providers in Asia. Britain and other EU countries are on a similar track. This “saving the planet” policy is killing the economies of Europe.

These three pressures – demography, economics and energy – are at the heart of the “mess” we call the European project. These are not easily fixable, which leads to the fourth problem. The complete lack of visionary leadership in Europe.

The putative leader of Europe is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her understanding is that all of Europe needs to pursue austerity in order to return public finances, especially in the Mediterranean EU States, to some sense of “normalcy” from which economic recovery can begin. She also assumes that the failed experiment of fiscal union in the Eurozone without concomitant political union must succeed. She is wrong on both counts.

A decade or more of mass unemployment and growing inequality and poverty will not provide the basis for economic growth, especially with high energy costs and a declining working population. But this is the vision implicit in Merkel’s position. While she is now giving lip-service to some stimulus for growth, she is refusing to support some of the key instruments which would enable growth – Eurobonds, support for inflation, infrastructure spending by Government and encouragement for employment. She is a one trick pony.

Hope is now pinned on the new President of France, Francoise Hollande – a politician who has never held political office. He is a pragmatist and not a visionary and is likely to find a course through the crisis which will secure him a second term, but is unlikely to hold a vision for the future of Europe.

One of two things will happen. Either Europe will seek closer political integration – a necessary condition for making the Euro work – or it will seek to loosen the political noose and focus more on trade and markets so as to stimulate growth. In either case, Europe will change faster than politicians can imagine. The market and global forces will see to it.

As all of this is happening, much to the surprise of many in the world, one country should surprise us all. Croatia voted recently to join the Eurozone and Europe. What are they thinking?

The End of Europe and the Start of the New

Greece’s exit from the Euro now appears inevitable. Democracy has broken out and the austerity regime imposed as a shock doctrine by Germany with the support of Sarkozy’s France is unraveling. Eleven governments have fallen in Europe and more are likely to follow. It looks reasonably certain that the fiskalunion compact will be rejected by Ireland and several other countries (France, Holland, Spain, Italy) are showing significant signs of back-tracking on what was one a “done deal”. 

When Greece returns to its own currency and begins to manage its own economy, it will be a shocking mess. Devaluation will occur overnight and the value of deposits will fall by 70-80%, the government will initially have trouble financing debt so will simply write off all of its loans as a total default, incurring the wrath of all. Then Greece will begin to sort itself out. Like Iceland and Argentina, they will come to manage their economy with intelligence and foresight. If they don’t, Greece will simply collapse as a nation. Staying in the Euro will incapacitate Greece for over a decade and inhibit their ability to reform and grow. Greece will likely become a hot-bed of revolt and rebellion against the EU in general and Germany in particular. Conflict could turn nasty, ending the near total peace of Europe since the second world war. Either way, the near term future for Greece is not pretty.

A Greek exit from the Euro will have ripple effects, most probably with Spain and Portugal next. Breaking up the Eurozone will help and will create some of the conditions needed for economic recovery. Trying to marry austerity as the core agenda with limited growth – the French plan – is unlikely to make much difference.  It looks like we are seeing the end of the beginning for this crisis and the beginning of the end game for the current phase of the European project.

Next there will be a need to rethink what the project is about. Boris Johnson, heir apparent to the leadership of the British Conservative Party, favours a straight “in or out” referendum on Europe and this is being echoed by others elsewhere in the EU27. But “in or out” of what? No one wants to see the end of easy travel across borders or the ready access to EU markets. What the “yes or no” is about is the hegemony of Brussels as a bureaucracy and the desire to stop or curtail the political integration project. Both of these issues – the encroachment of Brussels in every aspect of national life and the move to more and more political integration, which is what the fiskalunion fully represents – attack the idea of sovereignty. This is the core issue.

We could express this core issue in terms of two questions:  “What is the role of a nation state in a European Union?” Linked to this is the other critical question “what is the role of democracy in the nation state and in the European Union?”

It is clear that democracy is not favoured by the bureaucracy. When treaties have been rejected they have either been implemented anyway or rejecting nations have been made to keep voting until the treaty is accepted. When Greece suggested that it would ask the people what they thought of the austerity proposals in 2011 the EU machine went into overdrive to ensure that democracy wasn’t allowed to happen. So the answer to the second question is clear. The EU appears to oppose democracy.

In terms of the first question, we are about to find out. The new President of France meets with the German Chancellor to find out what France is allowed to say, think and do. The President arrives with a growth agenda and a recognition that this needs to be linked to strong fiscal discipline. He will use Paul Krugman’s observation that it was export led growth that has created the conditions which Germany enjoys, not austerity. He simply wishes to pursue the same strategy. Let’s see what the Chancellor says. Both are pragmatists and both are seasoned political operators, so we need to read between the lines as well as look at the lines themselves.

What is at stake is the whole conception of the European Project. I strongly recommend the recently published book The Decline and Fall of Europe by Francesco M. Bongiovanni (2012, Palgrave Macmillan), which looks in depth at the challenges the EU27 now face and provides a thorough analysis. Its worth the read (and the price of $30).

Education in Abu Dhabi - What DId The Transforming Education Summit lead to..

There is an editorial in todays The National (www.thenational.ae) in Abu Dhabi suggesting that schools here could significantly improve by encouraging competition and market forces.

Yet the summit on transforming education being held here (it ended yesterday) did not come to this conclusion. Looking at case studies of high performing jurisdictions, like Finland and Alberta (the world’s most successful English speaking school system), one could discern a different conclusion. It is that:

1.     There should be a standard, focused curriculum. Students and teachers should know what it is they need to learn and this should be in place through simple statements of learning intentions. For example, using the UNESCO Delors framework, Abu Dhabi should outline what students should be able to do at each grade.

The trick here is that “less is more”. The curriculum intentions need to be clear and specific, but the degree of prescription needs to provide room for schools and teachers to be creative, innovative and effective. Finland teaches us that “less is more” – Alberta is working on reducing the specificity and volume of curriculum objectives and focusing on strategic intent.

The other trick here, which Abu Dhabi could lead on, is to adopt a project based approach to learning rather than a subject based approach at the junior high / high school.

2.     Build teaching capacity and focus on effective teachers enabling creative learning. By looking at teaching as the profession that makes the most impact on a social and economic fabric of a society, teachers in Abu Dhabi need to be trained in the subjects they teach and in teaching effectiveness for the students to be found in Abu Dhabi. Teachers need to be highly qualified on arrival in the profession but also need professional development and time for curriculum planning in their day to day work.

Teachers also need collective capacity. While leaders in Abu Dhabi reject outright the notion of a teachers union (for no good reason, by the way) they need to embrace the idea of a Teacher Professional Association whose aimed is to direct and focus professional development, research and innovation and encourage the adoption of next practices. The longer teachers are seen as individuals working in isolation, the slower transformation will be.

One clear learning from the best performing systems is that teachers are able to work in all sorts of conditions, but when we provide the optimal conditions for effective teaching, they will amaze us.

3.     Don’t standardize, encourage innovation. Some jurisdictions have gone to league tables, standardized testing (also known as high stakes testing), radical intervention for schools that fail to meet arbitrary targets and so on. The trend in high performing systems is not to pursue this route. Instead, they are pursuing strategies of quality assurance and mindful student assessment aimed at student learning gains. I say more about this in my book Rethinking Education (available at lulu.com). Each school needs a school development plan which is supported by the governance of the school or school system and which makes commitments to progress, based on a realistic and evidence informed understanding of the starting state. By seeing schools as different, but focused on continuous improvement, innovation can be encouraged.

4.     Resources need to be appropriate for the objectives. Spending more per student does not necessarily “buy” better results. For example, pouring funds into technology does not necessarily have much impact on learning outcomes. There are no “magic bullets”, despite the claims of vendors. The key resources in a school are teaching capacities, smart use of time, the use of students as knowledge co-creators and effective school based leadership. I am growingly of the view that time is a more important resource than cash. It is not more time that is needed, but intelligent use of the time available.

A key aspect of resources are the spaces we ask students to learn in. One insight from the Nordic countries (especially Norway) is that the space we provide impacts the experience of learning. By rethinking the physical nature of schools we can have an impact on retention and learning outcomes.

Technology now enables a different kind of pedagogy – rather than providing one lap top per child or developing iPad schools, we need to design learning challenges and learning projects which demand a lot of teachers and students where technology is clearly an asset for the work.

5.     Reduce regulatory control and increase trust. The key unit of measurement in any education system is the school. Yet in many jurisdictions, we have built a massive non-school infrastructure – central offices for districts and government departments. Keep reporting simple, keep it focused on what matters most and don’t try and analyze every nuance of behavior or learning unless it aids learning. One school system in Alberta has a rule which is that “if the report you are about to complete will not help your students in a meaningful way soon, don’t do the report”. Makes sense.

6.     Don’t import models and processes, enable co-creation locally and foster ownership. The UAE is very good at “buying in” solutions from elsewhere and adopting them for a period of time, then abandoning them and moving on to the next “shiny object”. Stop this. Grow an Emirates solution by blending ideas from around the world and letting locals leverage them, given the context here.

7.     Focus on equity. Pasi Sahlberg, summarizing the OECD current position, made clear that seeking to promote equity and quality is a better strategy than pursuing either of these features alone. He is right. The key ambition is to make it possible for all schools to achieve similar outcomes rather than enabling competition for outcomes. Rather than schools competition, we should encourage co-opetition. Schools collaborating so that the system can compete with other systems in the world. Abu Dhabi needs all of its schools to be excellent, not just a few.

So I think The National has the strategy dead wrong. Lets hope that the leadership in Abu Dhabi sees this too.

This is my last report from the TES summit. I head home today. But it was a great experience – some wonderful people and some excellent conversations. The intention is to pursue this conversation virtually over the next two years and get back together in 2014. 

Six Themes of the TES Summit

On a long journey to and  from a place to eat it was time to reflect on the key messages from the Abu Dhabi summit on transforming education. There are six:

1. Context is everything. We can only understand a school and its potential in the context of its socio-economic, religious and cultural setting When there is poverty, inequity, censorship, violence, corruption or anything else which impacts thinking, feeling and action, the school is impacted. Transferring "solutions" from one education system to another (or even from Dubai to Abu Dhabi or Finland) is problematic since context is different.
2. Vision drives and shapes behaviour. Vision should be in sight but out of reach and should be long term. Vision doesn't change with new Ministers or new conditions. Vision persists, challenges and enables.
3. Those nearest to the learner have the most impact on the learner. We can talk policy and innovation all we like. Its teachers that make the most difference. Teachers need optimal conditions of practice, recognition, respect, support and investment (in professional development, in initial education). They also need to be led by teacher leaders who understand effectiveness, efficiency and the process of innovation. Until we support teaching and teaching excellence we have very little to work with.
4. What matters as much as how. How students are taught really matters. Authentic or "real learning" is what students ask for when you ask them what makes for a great school for all students. They also ask to be treated as persons, not "fodder" for the system. But what became clear in the discussion at TES is that what we teach matters too. This is why the Delors framework from UNESCO needs to be looked at again. It is also the case that less is more - a focused, mindful and deliberate curriculum is better than a rag tangle gipsy kind of curriculum.
5. Equity matters. Pasi Sahlberg, in an insightful presentation, made clear that school systems that pursue both quality and equity are more likely to succeed for more students than those who pursue quality or equity. In Finland there is little difference between schools on learning outcomes and performance. This means that there is no need to focus on inequity of outcome when seeking to improve quality. It is more of a level playing field. This has tremendous socio-economic consequences.
6. Resources matter. In a place where money appears not to be the issue (the Emirates in general and Abu Dhabi in particular), resources matter. What matters is that resources are used strategically, intelligently and that they are managed well. One significant resource is time - how do we make the best use of time for learning, time for learner support (special needs) and time for professional development? Is "time on task" as important as time on mindful work - you know the answer. Resources need also be used to support effective teaching (teachers need to be paid in such a way that pay is not getting in the way of the work), meaningful learning and relevant technology.

There was some references to technology here, but, as one colleague put it, "if technology is the answer, what question were we asking?". Technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a support for learning.

One caution raised late yesterday resonates still. It is that we should not confuse the abundance of information available online with a students access to knowledge. Students need to be enabled to see learning as the development of knowledge and understanding as well as skills and competencies. Gathering and representing information is not the work we need them to do. Developing understanding so that skills and wisdom are enabled is.

One final point. In my blog post the other day I made a sly comment about 21st Century skills - essentially saying that Socrates was a role model here. My point was that we need not be excited by the 21st century skills "product family" and marketing. Many of the skills - critical thinking, communication, compassion, creativity - have been at the heart of education for a considerable time. There is nothing much new about them. What is different is context. That was my point. Thanks (Brent) for calling me on this.

All in all, some excellent presentations from Andy Hargreaves, Pasi Sahlberg and a short and focused presentation from Gordon Brown. Smart Technologies Mick Adkisson and Pearsons Anders Hultin were also interesting (at least to me).

Today (Wednesday May 9th) at the summit we look at cases. Alberta is to be showcased by our own Diane Millard (AISI) and J-C Couture (ATA), with whom I have just completed a collection of new material (see Rethinking School Leadership - A Great School for All Students  available on Kindle and at lulu.com). 

As an aside, I am delighted by the appointment of Hon Jeff Johnson, MLA for Athabasca, as Alberta's new Minister of Education. Smart, thorough and insightful, Jeff is a man who will listen and engage. He was involved in the work of Inspiring Education and is likely to pick up where Dave Hancock left off. The brief interregnum of the "in between" Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, is over - he is now Deputy Premier. A good all round development.

Day One of the Summit

Day 1 of the Summit

The focus of the summit today, which has been a church-like experience (preaching not praying, preachers not talk) has been upon vision, great teachers and effective leadership at the level of the school.

Andy Hargreaves gave emphasis to the need to see teaching and the optimal conditions of practice in a strategic context and Pasi Sahlberg suggested that this context was a balance between a focus on quality and a focus in equity.  Gordon Brown suggested that it was also important to factor technology into this.

Overall, the most striking thing about this summit is that it is very passive – engagement is talked about not practiced – and how little real depth there is here. All the speeches are 20 mins or five and this leads to a high level conversation (over lunch) but not to depth in reflective thinking.