Beyond Good Grades: Measuring What Matters in the Education Ecosystem
Facilitating student success, enabling student wellbeing and delivering a high quality learning experience are common priorities for many education leaders. Whole of institution approaches that harness these aspirations through the curriculum and throughout an organisation’s culture as ‘everybody’s business’ have increasingly been adopted as the norm.
Across the mission statements of organisations (from kindergartens to universities, to ‘for purpose’ ed-tech companies focused on learning and employability outcomes) can frequently be found a commitment to transforming the lives of individuals and communities they seek to serve.
For many leaders in the education sector this mission translates into a strategic priority to tackle educational disadvantage, and a vision of education as enabling positive social impact. In this context it can be argued that the wellbeing of students, staff, and their surrounding communities is the overall goal and measure of success, enabling all to thrive and live meaningful and purposeful lives.
Is the education sector measuring what it seeks to achieve?
If we are to work towards fulfilling these shared missions we need to have metrics aligned with measuring the achievement of wellbeing and the ‘transformative’ impact of education across the learning ecosystem. Current measurement indicators for students and education institutions however, are often heavily centred around academic attainment ‘outputs’, with NAPLAN results and ATAR scores being notable examples in the school sector. This lack of alignment with what we are seeking to achieve and what we are actually measuring is noted internationally with The All Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics [1] in the UK recently stating that,
“Every parent wants their child to be happy in school, as well as academically successful. So a key objective of schools should be the wellbeing of their pupils. But, in an age of measurement, all the pressure on schools is to achieve good SATs, GCSEs and A levels. Schools will only give wellbeing the attention it needs, if it is measured” [2]
Similarly, in the tertiary education sector ‘outputs’ such as student retention rates, unit pass rates, completion and graduation rates are often regarded as proxies for student success and wellbeing. Mental health is often conflated with wellbeing, rather than viewing wellbeing as not just the absence of mental illness, but a state of positive functioning and thriving.
“Outputs such as student retention rates, unit pass rates, completion and graduation rates are often regarded as proxies for student success and wellbeing. ”
The sector has had a tendency to use a ‘batched’ approach to understanding cohorts of students often based on socio-demographic characteristics which make assumptions about individual student needs and aspirations at different points across the student lifecycle. Over the past couple of years, there has been a move towards acknowledging the impact of the institution a student attends as a factor in student attrition and completion rates, and the significance of individual traits that are not currently measured (such as motivation and resilience) [3]. This has also come at a time of frequent declarations from employers and industry groups that graduates transitioning into the workforce are lacking in particular capabilities and ‘soft skills’.
So it seems that ‘if we want to have better conversations about the long-term impacts of higher education on both individuals and wider society, we need the data to support this’ [4]. Without this our understanding of wellbeing remains limited and ill-defined. If one of the overarching outcomes of education is to enable social impact and transformational change our efforts will be limited if we do not measure what actually matters.
Collective wellbeing as the ultimate goal of social impact in the education sector
If we aim to deliver a student experience which is personalised and perceive that each student’s definition of success is highly individual in nature, the challenge for education leaders is two fold. How can we understand students and their subjective needs at scale? And, how can we enable students to understand themselves so that they can thrive as lifelong learners transitioning through an increasingly complex and disruptive world?
For example, if education is intended to be a transformative experience what are the shifts in holistic wellbeing an individual experiences as they transition into, through and out of different education sectors and institutions? What are their needs and how might these change at different touch points within the student lifecycle, and in different learning contexts? What resources and opportunities can best be directed to enrich and optimise their wellbeing and experience? How can we measure the social impact of particular programs and services in an era of limited resources and increasing demands on the sector?
Although technology and big data are great enablers for developing scalable solutions and actionable insights what is needed is a lens through which to frame our understanding of and achievement of collective wellbeing (particularly if this is regarded to be the ultimate goal of social impact). Measuring what we seek to achieve has appeared to be a wicked problem in and of itself, however. The time is ripe for broader discussions across the sector about measuring the fulfillment of our institutional missions, and how we might go about defining and measuring achievement of collective wellbeing, which it can be argued is the ultimate goal of social impact. Critically this is aligned with recent calls from governments across the globe to make collective wellbeing the goal of government policy, with New Zealand’s wellbeing budget a very notable example.
Written by Gillian Hatt, Huber Social Consultant, Education Subject Matter Expert
[1] The All Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics (UK). A Spending Review to increase Wellbeing: An open letter to the Chancellor. Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, May 2019, online: https://wellbeingeconomics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Spending-review-to-ncrease-wellbeing-APPG-2019.pdf
[2] Written evidence from the Centre for Economic Performance’s Child Wellbeing Group, (CMH0069) UK Government, 2017, online: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/health-and-social-care-committee/children-and-young-peoples-mental-healththe-role-of-education/written/45483.html
[3] Higher Education Standards Panel, Improving retention, completion and success in higher education. Discussion Paper, June 2017, online: https://www.education.gov.au/news/release-higher-education-standards-panel-s-discussion-paper-Migitimproving-completion-retention-and
[4] Hewitt, R, Measuring Wellbeing in Higher Education. Higher Education Policy Institute, Policy Note 13, May 2019, online: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Policy-Note-13-Paper-May-2019-Measuring-well-being-in-higher-education-8-Pages-5.pdf
[5] World Economic Forum, New Zealand has unveiled its first ‘well-being’ budget, May 2019, online: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/new-zealand-is-publishing-its-first-well-being-budget/