Lessons in Feedback 4: Pleasing the Parents

One of the things I have loved about moving to the private sector in Education is how straightforward it is. It works like this: if the parents are happy, they pay the fees and the school stays open.

I’ve drawn a picture to show this:

How private education works

Of course, the challenge is to know what to do to keep the parents happy, i.e. the ‘???’ in my diagram. I think the bulk of the answer is ‘feedback’ and I’ll come to that, but it’s worth considering just how complex the equivalent picture is for state schools.

In state schools you have to keep the parents happy. And you also have to keep Ofsted happy. And your local authority, or Academy chain if that’s relevant. And you have do well enough with your SATs scores to keep a decent position in the league tables. The pictures looks more like this:

State school have more things to think about

My diagram is by no means accurate, but I hope it shows that people running state schools have a lot more ‘stakeholders’ to please. This obviously filters down to the teaching, because pleasing parents, pleasing Ofsted and attaining brilliant SATs results are three different things (related, but different); therefore, they require more complexity. Often we hear the phrase ‘putting the children first’, and that’s a lovely sentiment, but the reality is that there are many different factors affecting what goes on in the classroom.

Anyway, I need to get back to the point about providing feedback to please the parents and so I will. But it will be in the next post.

 

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