How the Pareto Principle Can Improve Teaching in Your School
The Pareto principle is arguably one of the most widely applied rules in management. It states that:
20% of actions lead to 80% of results. 80% of actions lead to 20% of results.
Pause!
Now let’s think about what this means in the classroom. Only 20% of the typical teacher’s activity leads to 80% of the student’s learning outcomes. In fact, researchers have found that 20% of the students take up 80% of the time and resources in the classroom.
There are 3 things you need to do to effectively take advantage of the Pareto principle in your school
1. Know your 20%
From preparing lesson plans to conducting the assembly, get your teachers to write a list of their daily task. Next, they should rate each task based on how much impact it has on the student learning outcomes. Here is a free worksheet you can use.
2. Be Minimal
Teachers should be allowed to avoid any activity that does not have a clear purpose. Reward effectiveness rather than activity. E.g. Teachers should not only win prizes for punctuality but also for increasing the average student performance.
3. Allocate Resources
Allocate more time, finance and human resources to your 20%. You can leverage technology to carry out the less impactful tasks so that teachers have more time for the most important 20%.
How Gradely can Help
We found out that teachers spend a significant amount of time on creating and marking assessments, examinations and generating end of the term report card. Teachers can now do all of this is only a fraction of the time it typically takes by using Gradely’s advanced LMS which comes with thousands of curriculum-aligned question bank.
Our next rollout will include a one-click report feature which makes it possible for teachers to generate printable end of the year report card in few clicks.
If you haven’t signed up for a free trial of Gradely yet, you can sign-up via the link below.
gradely.ng/for-schools
Originally published at https://blog.gradely.ng on June 3, 2021.
