[Open-education] Open Government Data: Helping Parents to find the Best School for their Kids

[Terry Loane]

For me there is a huge irony here.

The very concept of open education is surely that people should be "free
to use, reuse, and redistribute [resources]" (to quote from:
http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/what-is-open/)
Now this is the very opposite of a market approach to distributing goods
and services. Marketisation of learning runs counter to open education
because it is has to involve an assumption of privilege for those who
access a particular resource/institution, which by definition will be
scarce (e.g. an expensive textbook or an over-subscribed school.) The
first paragraph of the quotation from Radu Cucos is a text-book,
neo-liberal rationale for the market approach to schooling:

"Each country has its own school market, if education is considered as a
product in this market. Perfect information about products is one of the
main characteristics of competitive markets. From this perspective,
giving parents the opportunity to have access to information about
schools characteristics will contribute to the increase in the
competitiveness of the schools market. Educational institutions will
have incentives to improve their performance in order to attract more
students."

Do we really believe that the idea of using 'open data' to ensure that
our kids attend a better school than the ones next door who do not have
access to such data is what open education should be about? Do we really
believe the last sentence of the above quotation: "Educational
institutions will have incentives to improve their performance in order
to attract more students"? (The evidence in the UK is that publication
and fetishizing of league tables can have a detrimental effect on
learning because it focuses the attention of the institution on
improving performance data rather than providing the best for each
individual child.)

I am also struck by the irony of using 'open data' to choose a school,
because schools are such 'closed' institutions, in just about every
sense of the word -- I have blogged bout this recently here:
http://terryloane.typepad.com/reallylearn/2014/03/why-are-schools-locked-shut-most-of-the-time.html

Surely, surely open education should be about far more than just using
performance data to try to get our kids into a better school than our
less well informed neighbours.

Terry Loane

On 03/06/2014 16:02, Marieke Guy wrote:
> There is a great post on the Open Government Partnership blog about
> using open government data to help parents find the best school.
> http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/radu-cucos/2014/06/03/open-government-data-helping-parents-find-best-school-their-kids
>
> The post, by Radu Cucos from Moldova, lists several apps from
> different countries that have been built on government data related to
> education and education institutions. I'll be adding these to the Open
> Education Handbook
> <http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/open-data-use-cases/>.
>
> He concludes by saying:
>
> "Open data on schools has great value not only for parents but also
> for the educational system in general. Each country has its own school
> market, if education is considered as a product in this market.
> Perfect information about products is one of the main characteristics
> of competitive markets. From this perspective, giving parents the
> opportunity to have access to information about schools
> characteristics will contribute to the increase in the competitiveness
> of the schools market. Educational institutions will have incentives
> to improve their performance in order to attract more students.
>
> While adopting the Open Data Initiative policy in the education field
> has advantages for everybody -- parents, schools and state
> authorities, it falls to governments to take the leading role in
> promoting Open Data. First of all, governments have to make sure that
> data on schools is being publicly released and regularly updated.
> Second, state institutions have to incentivize developers to create
> innovative apps. Third, governments have to increase demand for
> educational apps by raising awareness, lowering the costs for Open
> Data apps accessibility and decreasing the costs of accessing
> additional sources and information about schools."
>
> I'd be interested in hearing more about this from a country
> perspective. Anyone got any interesting use cases to share?
>
> We plan to have a community session on 'What has open data got to do
> with education' during June - details to follow.
>
> Marieke
>
> -- 
>
> Marieke Guy
> LinkedUp <http://linkedup-project.eu/> Project Community Coordinator |
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