This article is based on the content of the lecture given at the “IGS Education Forum for Local Governments 2022 Summer” held on July 28, 2022.

Lecturer: Mr. Noriaki Yamamoto, Superintendent of Education, Toda City Board of Education

Utilizing “Ai GROW” for the effective use of educational data and the promotion of EBPM

The Toda City Board of Education is a local government that is making good use of its compactness to advance education reform in a flexible manner. One of the concepts behind the education reform is EBPM (Evidence Based Policy Making), and the driving force behind it is the passionate desire of the current superintendent, who took office in 2015. One of the issues that the superintendent had felt since his time in the field was that schools were making decisions based on the 3Ks (experience, intuition, and fighting spirit) and running the organization accordingly, and he wanted to break away from that. He thought that data would be extremely useful as a tool for creating schools that could make decisions in an objective and organized manner, and he is promoting school management that makes use of data.

Promoting EBPM by focusing on the three Ts

In promoting EBPM, we are expressing our desire to implement the three Ts (continue, connect, use).

Regarding “continue”, the aim is to improve the continuity of the project by ensuring that the Board of Education provides proper support.

Regarding “connect”, the aim is to promote collaboration between schools and local governments by making the Board of Education more open, and to use common indicators to verify the effectiveness of initiatives, etc.

With regard to “use”, we aim to increase the productivity and efficiency of our initiatives by making good use of data accumulated at school sites, and also to use the data in a way that allows us to continue our initiatives even when the school year changes.

While we are focusing on improving lessons that capture the essence of the subject, we are also considering EBPM, EdTech to promote the use of ICT, and PBL (Project Based Learning) to promote problem-solving-type learning as concepts for educational reform. Regarding EBPM , it is also referred to as EIPP (Evidence Informed Policy and Practice). The policy is not to blindly trust data, but to use data to support the decisions of teachers and other personnel with specialist skills in schools.

The aims are “verification and improvement”, “scientific instruction” and “new knowledge”.

There are three main aims for the use of data. The first is “to verify and improve initiatives”, the second is “to scientifically deepen and formalize children's learning and teachers' instruction”, and the third is “to obtain new indicators and new knowledge by advancing research”. We are using “Ai GROW” to verify the effectiveness of our initiatives and measure changes in students' competencies, and I feel that it is very significant in that it can be used for all three of these things.

We also think that the results of the “Ai GROW” measurements are necessary in order to achieve individually optimized learning. The temperament and behavioral characteristics of children are very difficult to see, but by making these visible, it will become inevitable to look at and care about the good points of children on axes other than existing indicators such as academic ability and physical strength.

We are conducting empirical research to discover issues from a new perspective, and we are also using the numerical values for non-cognitive abilities measured by “Ai GROW” here. The objectivity of the data is a major advantage when it comes to using it for research. Subjective things like questionnaires can fluctuate depending on factors such as the psychological state of the students, so the fact that it can compensate for such uncertain factors is appealing. This initiative is still in its infancy, and we haven't achieved any major results yet, but in the future, I hope we will be able to introduce new indicators for looking at children from a variety of perspectives.

The key to spreading this approach is to reduce the burden on teachers in the field

It takes a very long time to promote the use of data. Seven years have passed since the current superintendent took office in 2015, and the concept is only just starting to be adopted by school administrators. Since it has not yet been fully incorporated by teachers in the field, I think it is important for the Board of Education to continuously convey the message that the use of data is essential for the organization.

In doing so, the key will be how much usefulness teachers at each school can perceive. It is also important to make it easier for teachers to use data that is familiar to them and make it easier for them to use it by reducing the burden. Ai GROW is not just about collecting data and then leaving it there. It can be used to create the most appropriate groupings according to the training objectives, and it can also be used to create the findings to be included in the guidance records and survey forms.

Reviewing initiatives in light of what you want to achieve and securing a budget

I think that every local government has an educational promotion plan, but I think that it is necessary to collect data related to the main points of the initiatives and to adopt measurement tools that can also be used by teachers at each school in their day-to-day work. There were many difficulties from acquiring a budget to introducing the system. These were two points: gaining the understanding of the schools and persuading the city's finance department.

Fortunately, the schools in Toda City were already used to new initiatives, and there were teachers on the ground who were willing to promote them, so we were able to move forward by actively supporting their voices. I think there is also a way to achieve a certain level of results by continuing with specific grades, rather than all grades.

In terms of the city's finance department, Toda City has included “development of non-cognitive skills” in its education promotion plan, and the mayor's campaign promises include educational reform using data, so I think it was effective to argue that “this is necessary in order to achieve what the city wants to do”. Ultimately, in order to clearly show the stance of the Toda City Board of Education, we replaced the general academic ability survey with “Ai GROW”.

I think it is necessary to reconsider where we should spend our money under different values.