Scalability

When developing the architecture of a technological project, a major consideration is that of scalability: The architecture's ability to increase in size without falling apart, keeping its usefulness across the increased volume or scope. Designing a piece of software to handle 10 users is often very different from designing such software to handle 10,000,000 users. Just ask anyone who created a web application and was unlucky enough for it to be too successful too quickly - It tends to crash miserably.

The same issue comes up when considering a business idea or business process. How few customers and how many customers can the same business mechanism support, and keep fulfilling its duty - making a tidy profit?

The discussion about scalability is not special to any type of human endeavor. But in the context of this blog, we can note that the same issue of scalability is paramount when considering the architecture of an education system. Building a new school, based on great pedagogic ideas, is wonderful. It is done often, but its direct impact is limited to the people who come into contact with that school: Pupils, teachers, parents, families. Building a network of schools will impact many more people. It is done much less often. Building an education system for a whole society, such as a nation, impacts everybody. Many nations do it just once, close to the creation of the state, in great haste.

To illustrate the issue of scalability, let's take a single aspect of building schools: That of finding and training teachers. Scaling from a single instance to a network to a comprehensive system presents not only different orders of magnitude of the quantity of work, but also different quality of the task. When creating a single school, one can call up a dozen or two of the best teacher one knows, and enlist them in the project. When creating a network, one needs hundreds of great teachers. That's probably more than any single school founder knows. This requires a process of finding and screening teachers. Already a very different task than for the single school. When creating a national schooling establishment, finding the right teachers is not enough - there aren't enough of them. It is necessary to get prospective teachers to apply, screen them, then train them, and probably re-screen. Again, very different tasks than for the single school or network of schools.

Beyond the issue of staffing the teachers positions, there is a host of other tasks that are done very differently for a single school, a network, and a national system. For example - at no particular order: Financing, locating buildings, addressing the community, obtaining learning materials, establishing a curriculum, finding students, administration, public health, providing care for special needs, dealing with students at the low end of achievements, dealing with students at the high end of achievements, discipline, legal liabilities, teaching methods and certainly quite a few other issues of which I am blissfully ignorant. This type of scalability issue may be called "Administrative Scalability". (The reader is welcome to suggest a better name)

Founding a school, a network and a system is one aspect of the scalability issue in education. Another aspect is that of introducing a project or any change into an existing environment. Managing change in a classroom, school, network or national education establishment calls for very different type of work, not just amount of work. Promoting enthusiastic involvement in a project to be implemented in a single school, can be done by the leadership of a single person - maybe the principal. For simplicity's sake, assume the project involves only teachers, and none of the other stakeholders. Bringing teachers into such emotional involvement in larger scales requires first the involvement of all the principals to such an extent that the principals themselves will not only follow the lead of the initiator (say - the minister of Education), but they should be so fired up about the project that they can be the effective leaders in their own schools. In a national education system, there are too many principals for a single initiator to appeal to. Replicating the enthusiasm may require one or more extra layers. The transfer of enthusiasm, of emotional involvement, of the belief in "the way", should be complete, otherwise the project will lose sight of its original meaning, which is sadly the normal case. This type of issue may be called "Scalability of Leadership."

There is another issue of scalability which appears in a whole different dimension: The dimension of time. A school is founded, based on great ideals and the great capability of its founder. Great teachers join the school, all full of enthusiasm and competence. What happens after a few years? The founder-leader doesn't stay forever. Some leading teachers may go their own way. The teachers may have new ideas and may not agree with each other. The same goes for parents of pupils. New pressures appear from the ever-changing society around the school. All too often, a great new school loses much of its greatness within a decade or two. We need to maintain the spirit of an educational environment - of any scale - for the long run, maintaining the momentum and transmitting the spark from one stakeholder to another, so it remains alive regardless of the particular persons who leave or remain within that establishment. To do that we need something we can call "Scalability into the Future." Or we can call it a better name if we find one.

When venturing to create an education system, it is imperative to keep in mind the various aspects of scalability. This way the dream stands a slightly better chance to be realized, and to be comprehensive and long lasting.