Dick Sblog

Two articles caught my eye last week. One, was a critique of our target-driven management culture (’Make a decision? We’re two dumbed-down’, Simon Caulkin, Observer Business & Media, 27.05.07). I quote, “… targets are a classic substitute for the hard work and thought needed to understand real demand and how to organise work to satisfy it. They… absolve those at the top of responsibility for or knowledge of the methods used to achieve them. For those on the receiving end, it’s their job against the integrity of the only thing under their control – the figures they give their bosses. As Deming noted, no prizes for guessing which is the casualty”.

Having recently completed a review of the key performance indicators for a government funded programme – the phenomenon of ‘target hunting’, skewing behaviour to ensure that targets are hit rather than ensuring quality of service, was blindingly apparent.

The second piece was by Mary Riddell in the Observer on May 6th (”In this muddy field, teenage lives are being turned around”) in which she describes the absurdity of insecure funding for projects that engage and motivate NEETs (youngsters who are ‘not in employment, education or training’) and pre-NEETs. She took as her example a project which used the motivating power of off-road motorcycling to reestablish the confidence and constructive enthusiasm of kids. this scheme resulted in a reduction of reoffending rates from 58% to 13% at a cost of a paltry £2198 per participant. Contrast this with the annual cost of £172,300 for one place in a secure training centre!! Despite this self-evident cost-effective success, the scheme, like dozens of others, is struggling to survive on hand-outs and grants.

This is exactly what happened to the Avon Motor Vehicle Project, run by my old colleague David Glossop – cheap, brilliantly successful and closed for lack of funding.

Meanwhile, as we crank up surveillance on children, our politicians are planning to compel kids to stay at school for another two years, with penalties for truants: time in which they will no doubt be subjected to a regime of yet more meaningless targets which bear no relationship to the reality of their lives while hapless teachers hunt ways to deliver the figures that purport to show success.

As Mary Riddel observes, “Little sounds worse for the fifth of teenagers who drift in and out of education, having learnt next to nothing, than 2 more years of disruptive desolation. do it the other way round. Teach them a skill and then build literacy and numeracy on a passion that can inspire learning”.

As the parent of a young man who trod this path (now a productive and engaged apprentice motor vehicle mechanic) – I can only agree.