What to teach is something
we take seriously, but how to create the environment to help athletes to learn
is more important. It is what every
country wants or what they say they want; to improve education and wellbeing
for the citizens. The infrastructure,
meaning the environment needed, should to be accepted by members: triathletes,
coaches, federations and nations.
Selling the idea is not an easy task; and selling the idea when other personal
needs are stronger is even more difficult.
In the case of Mexico, we try to convince people that there is a problem
in education, but our President says that he has a different data, contrary to
the OCDE. Let’s be serious and take the case of France:
Reconciling educational
excellence and success for all is not just the best way to tackle social
inequalities at the root, but also to obtain good results.
Results from around the
globe illustrate various best practices applied to improve the equity and
performance of the education system. Portugal’s TEIP programme for example
(Priority Intervention Education Territories) targets investment in
geographical regions where the population is socially disadvantaged and where
school drop-out rates are higher than the national average. Singapore, first in the PISA
science rankings, has a comprehensive teacher evaluation system that includes
in particular the contribution to students’ personal and academic development,
as well as the quality of parent-teacher relations.
In short, the capacity of
a system to help students in difficulty and those from disadvantaged
backgrounds to improve raises the general quality of the system and thus its
overall performance.
In France however, investments in education do not always reach
these groups. I had some personal experience of this malfunctioning when I
arrived in France and asked people to recommend primary schools for my own children.
The answer was: “Don’t
pick a school, pick a neighbourhood”.
How can we ensure that success at school isn’t the result of a
postcode lottery? France has already implemented reforms going in the right
direction.
Creating the environment in countries
like Mexico is possible, but it is micro environment within the country. Educating the huge bureaucratic apparatus is impossible,
and even more when the head of the system, CONADE, barely finished High School (certificate
equivalent to a GED). We gave up trying
educating the bureaucracy and limited ourselves to educate six to eight parents. Our micro-system produced a world champion
but so far we cannot influence a bigger population. Perhaps this is our fate, but we continue
trying to teach with the example.
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