Knowledge
Joyanto Mukherjee, Founder-CEO, TNT (Tutored And Trained) explains the multiple pros of teacher auditing
In a scenario marked by soaring levels of teacher attrition, serious drop in teacher quality and a deficiency of safety standards for students, TNT (Tutored And Trained) attempts to systematically address these multiple concerns.
Have you ever noticed that ‘Teacher’ is invariably missing altogether from the list of professions that feature in career guidance sessions? Low professional esteem combined with far from competitive salary scales, and lack of genuine accountability, contributes to a drastic drop in teacher quality. Considering it is the teacher who is the actual one running the show, why the surprise when outcomes invariably fall short of the mark?
In a scenario marked by soaring levels of teacher attrition, serious drop in teacher quality and a deficiency of safety standards for students, TNT (Tutored And Trained) attempts to systematically address these multiple concerns. Pioneering the concept of auditing schools and colleges across India, TNT uses several different services to help in Teacher Evaluation, Policy Review, Safety Audits and to create revenue streams for clients. The result is educational institutes implementing progressive ideas, better teaching practices, and more involved and effective staff, which helps infuse new life into old institutions, and help newer institutions flourish.
Founder and CEO, Joyanto Mukherjee explains how it works…
Auditing Systems
At TNT we use a combination of Behavioural Science, Industrial and Clinical Psychology to systematically review systems. Firstly, we audit the working of the school’s academic system. Then we audit all members of the organisation from the teaching staff, to management and non-teaching staff. This enables them to increase their revenues, their PNLs and ROIs, and helps improve their way of running the school.
Incidentally, we have been conducting a safety audit in schools much before this spate of problems of violence against children in schools. We monitor the physical and mental safety standards of a child inside a school.
Ours is hands on approach. We do a minimum of three days of audit in a school. Once we have given the presentation to the management, we hand over a file on every teacher and recommended changes, and return every quarter to check progress – a total of five visits to a school a year.
Assessing Teachers
We emotionally audit teachers, as it’s important to remember that the teacher is also an individual person. Teachers are human, they need to be heard. In the teacher audit, called Teacher Behavioural Analysis (TBA), we sit with each teacher for at least 45 minutes to an hour. Besides the analysis which is based on evidence based Industrial Psychology, we also identify her subjective emotions and take into consideration her views and opinions. The analysis is therefore both qualitative as well as quantitative.
The Next Step
We then present back to the management our findings. We do cluster findings. Hypothetically speaking, we might find 40% of teachers are
motivated, 30% have an issue, out of which 10% feel that the salary is not up to the mark; 90% might feel that the principal is not up to the mark! Post this, we recommend wholesome changes as well as individual changes. An entire section of the report with individual teacher analysis will provide customised solutions based on each teacher’s individual problems. This could include recommending certain YouTube videos which we have already shortlisted, which help improve their speech or even recommending a modification of policies by the management.
Preventing Attrition
We give a highly extrapolated S.W.O.T analysis of the teacher to the management. One of the main aims from our analysis is to prevent Teacher Attrition. Often a teacher joins one school, takes a salary raise, and immediately shifts to another school. TNT specializes in understanding the behavioural and policy drivers that lead to teacher attrition and help the school in curbing these drivers. We have had an immense 93% success rate of identifying and helping school drastically reduce their teacher attrition rates.
Winning Trust
Initially, the teacher is hesitant because they feel targeted. However, the tests are designed in such a way that the teacher eventually just pours her heart out. We create a very comfortable environment during the auditing process as well. Though we record them on camera, we inform them that if they are uncomfortable with any question we can stop recording, so they know that we are on their side again.
We would also protect the teacher’s interests in case we find something that is negative towards the principal or the management. We would not mention that explicitly in the report because that could create a rift between the management and the teacher. Only red flagged information, wherein immediate action is required, is informed directly to the management or principal.
We have seven open lines which we share with teachers in the report itself, offering them the facility for one-on-one communication if they so desire. The aim is to support the teacher throughout. If we feel that a teacher is edging towards an urgent need of counselling, we immediately recommend the same. We have in-house counsellors on board who are called in to take separate sessions – at no extra cost.
We also sign a non-disclosure agreement with both teacher and management, which obviously means we will not use these findings outside without extrapolation and stratification, which effectively makes the data into a bunch of anonymous numbers.
Behavioural Edge
The tangible gain that the institution gains, which can be applied for several years, is an insight into decision making and process development as part of our policy review process. Here is where we use behavioural science to optimize decision making processes within the school, such as hiring and remuneration choices, promotion ladders and overall choice architecture modification for the school. Application of behavioural science, in this manner, is something that is not done by any other institution pan-India, and creates tangible gains for the institution at effectively no-cost for the foreseeable future. Of course, like all our other processes, we overview and ensure correct implementation of the same during our follow up visits each quarter.
Finding Success
When managements learn about teacher auditing, they feel that this is what has been missing in the whole jigsaw of improving teachers. They feel they get taken for a ride when it comes to teacher training because they cannot see outcomes. Here they see measurable outcomes. All managements we have encountered are in favour of it but they want to pace it out because it is a cost. Also planning has to be done to give their teachers’ time to us. Managements want to spend cautiously because at the end of the day, these are not businesses where they could increase supply tomorrow and get an ROI on it. Even an attempt to increase of Rs.10 in fees is met by opposition from parents. They want to spend wisely. They definitely want happy teachers but they are cautious because what if the teacher leaves after they have invested in her? This is where they find our services most useful.
This story features in our November 2017 issue.