Corporal punishment in state schools in the UK was made illegal in 1986. This is the story about how it was eliminated in one Local Education Authority, Oxfordshire, before that.
My dad became CEO of Oxfordshire in 1978. He was young, and opposed corporal punishment, but knew, as he puts it, that “in a time of cuts, if I went to the politicians and asked them for money for canes they’d ask me how many I wanted, and did I want the luxury versions”. So he didn’t talk to them about corporal punishment. Instead, he surveyed the schools on how often they caned pupils (caning was the only formal form of physical punishment, though I do remember witnessing some less formal physical punishment from particularly brutal teachers when I attended school in a different LEA). When the results were in, he gave each school a list, showing a league table, with the numbers of canings at each school, but the names of all other schools redacted. The head at the top of the list was shocked to see that his school accounted for 25% of all the canings in the LEA, but dad said something to the effect of “its ok, that’s the way you like to do things at your school; I hear the swish as I drive by” [honestly he might be making that bit up, though its quite believable if you know him]. The following year canings were down substantially, even at that school, but it was still at the top of the list, now accounting for 33% of all the canings. Again, he was reassuring. Within 2 years, the league table was empty — there were no canings.
When the government (a Tory government, remember!) proposed prohibiting corporal punishment in all schools, the politicians in Oxfordshire were distraught. “How are our schools going to keep order?”. Dad assured them there’d be no problem, because he’d been monitoring corporal punishment, and had discovered that none of the schools had been using it for some time.
It occurs to me that someone should interview my dad for some more of these stories before he goes doolally or kicks the bucket really.
{ 12 comments }
Sumana Harihareswara 03.11.21 at 4:14 pm
Wow. what a story! I need to keep this example in mind as a tactic to use.
jsrtheta 03.11.21 at 4:27 pm
If only there were someone who could do that, alas…
J-D 03.11.21 at 11:56 pm
No examples are coming to my mind where I personally could use this tactic, but I am thinking of some where it might have a use if only somebody was prepared to adopt it: for example, statistics for police shootings or deaths in police custody or something similar could be broken down by police area/district or whatever the applicable terminology is in a jurisdiction.
On the other hand, the tactic might in some cases encourage exactly the opposite of what I (at least) would want: for example, it might encourage immigration officials to compete to achieve the highest number of deportations.
Its success with Oxfordshire schools suggests school principals felt, unprompted, that caning more students than other schools was a negative distinction; I would expect the tactic to be effective where something analogous is true, but not where it isn’t.
Harry 03.12.21 at 4:10 am
“Its success with Oxfordshire schools suggests school principals felt, unprompted, that caning more students than other schools was a negative distinction; I would expect the tactic to be effective where something analogous is true, but not where it isn’t”
Yeah, I have to admit when he got about a third of the way into telling me this I thought it was going to go in a very bad direction (he’s quite as willing to talk about his failures as his successes, and you can’t tell when he starts which it is going to be!).
Gareth Wilson 03.12.21 at 6:18 am
“in a time of cuts, if I went to the politicians and asked them for money for canes they’d ask me how many I wanted, and did I want the luxury versionsâ€
MM 03.12.21 at 11:06 am
I am a little surprised that the numbers being reported up the chain to your dad were considered robust. In the end, once caning became illegal, it had to stop. But had the law not been passed, would the league table tactic have actually stopped (or greatly reduced) caning, or just driven it off the books?
Ray Vinmad 03.12.21 at 11:24 pm
Brilliant story. I hope your dad does put all this down.
There really should be a word for that sales and/or psychological technique he used. ‘Shaming’ doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s the ‘surprise public reveal’ that does a lot of the work I think?
It’s like he got them to see themselves from the outside–he didn’t merely judge them.
Harry 03.13.21 at 3:51 am
“I am a little surprised that the numbers being reported up the chain to your dad were considered robust”
They weren’t really reporting up the chain. The heads all reported this information directly to him. He knew them all. (I just counted: there are currently 37 secondary schools in the LEA, but I’d guess there were closer to 50 at that time). And one thing I’ve learned from him is if you want to run an organization well you need multiple sources of information, which in turn requires fostering relationships throughout. Within 3 years of taking the post he had several people in every school that he could rely on to confirm or disconfirm.
J-D 03.13.21 at 5:05 am
This is why, in Yes, Minister, Humphrey was resistant to Jim talking with anybody in the Department except Humphrey himself (or at least to his doing so when Humphrey himself was not present). It was essentially the same point, but being made in a converse way.
Trader Joe 03.15.21 at 12:24 pm
Great story.
I’m familiar with a large insurance brokerage that at their annual awards event would call 10 branch managers up to the stage – 5 of those had produced top margins and 5 had produced the worst margins. They would line up all 10 across the stage and then the 5 best were asked to step forward and handed an envelope with $10,000 cash in it. They then read off the results of the other 5 and had them leave the stage.
Much like in Harry’s story, after a few years the practice was stopped mainly because after awhile the results at the low end of the list really weren’t that bad. The practice had succeeded in raising the overall averages and while the best were still lauded, shaming the worst wasn’t really all that necessary.
trane 03.15.21 at 9:40 pm
Yes, someone – maybe yourself, Harry – should do a little series of interviews with your dad.
Tom Slee 03.16.21 at 12:50 pm
This is indeed a great story, but I’ve been wondering if it’s an early manual example of the horrible trend of gamification. Give everyone a score and they will optimize it.
It does feel different to when a computer does it, but not sure I can articulate why.
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