John Kay, author of Obliquity: why our goals are best achieved indirectly, gave what I considered to be a fascinating talk. His book has been on my Amazon wishlist almost since it came out and I’ve now got several more reasons to read it.

Before I go any further, the stimulus for writing this post comes from the TES article ‘Wales asks schools to teach to the Pisa test‘. As I mentioned in my recent Purpos/ed Ignite presentation, education is under the control of governments, and PISA is pretty much the only tool they have to compare educational outcomes. Unfortunately, it focuses on a very narrow aspect of education and is accused of using discredited statistical techniques.

John Kay’s key point was that we often achieve the ends we desire indirectly. He summed this up perfectly by his example of ICI, the chemical company. I haven’t got the exact quotations he used, but in the 1970s ICI’s mission statement focused firmly on innovation and customers. ‘Shareholder value’ was merely a by-product of the core function of the company. By the 1990s this had reversed, with ‘shareholder value’ being the number one priority.

Of course, ICI no longer exists having lost its innovative edge. Likewise, if we focus on narrow and questionable measures of education to make comparisons with other countries, we miss the point of learning. PISA is the educational equivalent of ‘shareholder value’. Focusing on the by-product rather than the core mission is worrying.

Perhaps it’s time to take education out of the hands of politicians?

If you’re interested in debating the purpose(s) of education, you might want to join the debate at purposed.org.uk. Look especially at our call for more #500words contributions!

Before I went away I mentioned on Twitter that it would be great if we could have a Twitter Fantasy Football league. Low and behold, @damian613 @iusher set it up and @tombarrett texted me whilst I was away to say it was going ahead.

If you’d like to get involved, get in touch and I’ll send you the details!

Here’s my team and the standings after the first games:

Congratulations to Lisa, but there’s a lot of games left to play… :-p