What Works, Works Everywhere

What works, works everywhere

Leading reformer says successful strategies cut across oceans and cultures

JSD: In your work preparing the McKinsey report, How the World’s Best- Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, you found that several policies and approaches delivered superior results for students. Can you describe those? Barber: There were basically four key messages from looking at the best systems in the world. Although these systems were on three different conti- nents, in Canada, in Finland, in Singapore and in other parts of Asia, all culturally extremely varied, they had three or four things consistently in common. One is that they recruit really good people into teaching. They could recruit people with good quali- fications — that is, good academic degrees — but also with the personal qualifications to be a good teacher, things like their generosity,

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