The Social Innovation Agenda for Education The Netherlands

1. The Social Innovation Agenda for EducationThe Netherlands Daisy Satijn Ministry of Education, Culture and Science

2. Content • The Dutch Social Innovation Agenda for Education • Six impediments for innovation • New policy strands: examples of the strategy • Measurement: development of indicators (a Dutch attempt)

3. Social Innovation Agenda for Education • Programme of the present government: Social Innovation Agendas for a range of crucial subjects (e.g. water, energy, health, mobility, etc): one of them for education • Been brought about in consultation with different ministries, the directorates within the ministry of education, organisations in the educational field (school leaders, teachers, educational ICT, etc), and education scientists. • Presented last June; implementation started in September.

4. Innovation in Education: why? • Some challenges can’t be met by launching a special programme or just by putting more money in the system (e.g. teacher shortage) • A lot of knowledge about possible improvements, how to arrange things ‘smarter’, is hidden in the education field • The education field itself has to be strengthened, so they can use their expertise to cope with forthcoming challenges. • In the Netherlands schools have a lot of autonomy. The stronger the schools (teachers, school leaders), the less policy from the ministry is needed.

5. Innovation in education: where? • Sustainable improvement possible at three levels: - Executive level: learning environment and teaching - Organisational level: processes in schools - Institutional level: the system (steering and giving incentives to the other two levels by funding, regulations, etc.) • Misconceptions in the education field: ’innovation is something difficult with ICT’, ‘Innovation is some kind of big plan from the ministry’, ‘Innovation costs extra time so it will increase workload’ etc. -> teachers in the Netherlands are quite sceptical

6. The innovation strategy for education • A twofold policy: • Special programmes for specific challenges (e.g. teacher shortage, arrears in language skills, drop outs, etc.) • Strengthening the innovation capabilities of the field. • Removing the six impediments

7. Innovative strength of the education field: 6 impediments Resistance to innovations Shortage of time to think about how to optimize processes in the school No feeling of urgency and necessity The reluctance of professional school leadership The educational and financial risks that come with innovation A lack of knowledge about what works and what not

8. Three principles • Basic strategy: autonomy of the school as starting point • Depth strategy: trying to find out what works best, using experiments • Dissemination strategy: using proven interventions in other areas (make applicable for an other situation) Special attention for evidence based policy and practice

9. What’s new about the strategy? • The basic, depth and dissemination strategy for programmes in all education levels: from implicit practise to explicit strategy • Always reduction of one or more impediment(s) • Always attention for evaluation (gathering evidence) • Always attention for sustainability (so in the future schools will be a little bit less dependant on all the support organisations) • With the aim of empowering the field (so in the future, less policy is needed)

10. Examples of implementations • Innovation Impulse: tackling the teacher shortage • WikiWijs: open source for digital educational resources • Onderwijs Bewijs

11. Innovation Impulse • Subsidy to stimulate schools (teachers and school leaders) to come up with innovative solutions for the future teacher shortage • Executed by external organisations • For primary and secondary education • Focus on solutions that organise the work in an other way, without an increase of workload or a decline of school quality • Progress: • Innovative concepts are now being developed en judged • Good concepts will be translated to specific school situations (early 2010) • Experiments start in January 2010

12. WIKIWIJS

13. WikiWijs - WikiWise • An open, internet-based platform for educational resources • Based on open source software, open content and open standards • By teachers and for teachers • Scope: the whole Dutch educational system, from primary education up to universities Progress: • Still in trial phase • only for mathematics and Dutch language • School year 2010-2011 expected to be fully operational Role of the government: • Make a platform as Wikiwijs possible. Content is the responsibility of the education field.

14. Onderwijs Bewijs

15. Onderwijs Bewijs • Programme to stimulate experimental research in education • For early childhood, primary education and secondary education • Meant to obtain knowledge about what works and what not Role of the government: • The government sets the topics, but the interventions/experiments are ideas of the schools • Organisation of conferences and an online tool for matching researchers and schools Progress: • First round started in December 2008 • Implementation of the selected projects started in June 2009 • Second round will start in February 2010

16. Measuring innovation in education- a Dutch attempt -

17. measuring innovation in education Two approaches possible: 1. Starting from outside the education sector: service industry >public/non-profit services > educational services 2. Starting from within the education sector: looking into the educational practice: which factors are the most influencial ones

18. areas for specifying indicators

19. MICRO (class level) MESO (school level) MACRO (sector level) NATIONAL (level of education) input teachers - specific competencies such as examining attitude, external orientation - percentage ‘thinking time’ scheduled for further training, external contacts, study travel etc. knowledge management - access to knowledge (Internet, library) - knowing who knows what material - modern equipment - interactive learning methods pupils/students - percentage receiving personalised approach school climate - functioning as a team - appreciation of diversity - openness concerning errors and learning of it - well functioning suggestion box - satisfaction of employees - moral notion ofresponsibility knowledge management - ict-datainfrastructure - access to knowledge (Internet, library) - knowing who knows what school leadership - transformational leadership - specific HRM competencies to promote creativity and entrepreneurship finances - expenditure for improvement processes and products - expenditure for training - expenditure for new equipment financially - percentage innovation subsidies of total financing - nature and unambiguity of the incentives - budgets for further training and R&D curriculum - creativity/dissolvent capacity explicitly in attainment targets regulation - flexible rules for renewal - development of knowledge about managing risks management - sufficient basis (research and practice) - access to knowledge (Internet, library) financially - time and money for life long learning - (co)financing by third parties commitment - involvement stakeholders

20. MICRO (class level) MESO (school level) MACRO (sector level) NATIONAL (level of education) input teachers - specific competencies such as examining attitude, external orientation - percentage ‘thinking time’ scheduled for further training, external contacts, study travel etc. knowledge management - access to knowledge (Internet, library) - knowing who knows what material - modern equipment - interactive learning methods pupils/students - percentage receiving personalised approach school climate - functioning as a team - appreciation of diversity - openness concerning errors and learning of it - well functioning suggestion box - satisfaction of employees - moral notion ofresponsibility knowledge management - ict-datainfrastructure - access to knowledge (Internet, library) - knowing who knows what school leadership - transformational leadership - specific HRM competencies to promote creativity and entrepreneurship finances - expenditure for improvement processes and products - expenditure for training - expenditure for new equipment financially - percentage innovation subsidies of total financing - nature and unambiguity of the incentives - budgets for further training and R&D curriculum - creativity/dissolvent capacity explicitly in attainment targets regulation - flexible rules for renewal - development of knowledge about managing risks management - sufficient basis (research and practice) - access to knowledge (Internet, library) financially - time and money for life long learning - (co)financing by third parties commitment - involvement stakeholders

21. MICRO (class level) MESO (school level) MACRO (sector level) NATIONAL (level of education) output educational performance - pupil/student performances in innovative areas (adaptation PISA-test questions?) teachers - higher productivity - less absenteeism Manual (OECD) - new product/process introduced in last three year - existing activities organised in a new way - new marketing technique introduced applied to education - positions graduates in further education and profession - reputation benchmark - saving in expenditures - higher productivity - less absenteeism provision of education - percentage new schools and (combinations of) courses existing less than five years - percentage schools with a particular profile - diversity in teaching and learning methods - renewal of (parts of) curricula (for example robotics, genetics) results - percentage students in programmes started less than five years - adoption curve of policy measures (for example social training) external cooperation - connectivity: number of and nature of the connections (for example companies, science, foreign countries) - figures of the surrounding area economic outcomes - saving in expenditures - higher productivity - less absenteeism competitiveness - position of The Netherlands in innovation ranking (WEF) - more higher educated people with constant level of quality social outcomes - improved social functioning - smaller percentage unemployed people economic outcomes - saving in expenditures - higher productivity - less absenteeism

22. Discussion • Overview is version zero: result of just one brainstorm • What has to be done next: • compare the result of this bottum-up approach with the other • thinking about the coherence between the factors: which one is conditional for others • thinking about priorities: which are must-haves, which nice-to-haves • thinking about the phase of the innovation process: which ones are predictive, indicating acceptance, and which ones are relevant for implementation of innovation • as one of the colleagues said: these factors influencing innovation, are to be seen as a game of domino.

23. Thank you