I wish I had collected these stories and vignettes over the years as I came across them. This most recent example came up in recent conversation. It’s a simple, yet perfect, illustration of the challenges of conflicting incentives. My thesis is neither new nor particularly radical but this example reinforces the point that we underestimate at our peril the power of incentives to facilitate change when they align and undermine efforts at change when they don’t. When we talk of social change we see that conflicting incentives most often arise at the interface of organisations and teams, where insufficient attention is paid to the impact of one on the other within the wider system. Here’s that example.

Primary-school teachers are supposed to send children home for 48 hours when they show up with symptoms of colds, covid, flu-like illnesses and other such infectious diseases. For the head teacher, monitored on school-wide metrics such as overall attendance, this is not a good thing. Each time a pupil is at home for two days, and not in school, attendance figures take a hit. Better to keep quiet and keep the children in school to keep the attendance figures above target levels. Because – OFSTED^⁠1! 

And so what is best for people in one part of the system – the children and those who might be adversely affected by being exposed to their illness – is the worst thing that can happen to people in another part of the system – the headteacher, having to justify the low attendance, wanting to avoid drawing attention to their school through potentially failing metrics. Meanwhile, for the teachers caught somewhere between these two perspectives, it might feel like these conflicting incentives are literally pulling them in two directions. This is the very definition of practitioner burden. 

Hierarchy wins out, emails are sent to the teachers requesting they don’t send ill children home for 48 hours, and attendance levels are maintained. Sickness will be more likely to circulate within the school, negatively impacting the children’s ability to concentrate, engage and learn and potentially increasing sickness rates among staff.  

What is the alternative? Where incentives conflict we have to try and understand where they are coming from. Usually the conflict will be traced back to policies, budgets, politics or leadership imperatives in different parts of a system that don’t align with the organisations within it. 

In this case, why are we tracking attendance? Perhaps this is considered to be a measure of how well run the school is or a proxy indicator for attainment levels at later stages. Someone, in some part of the system, clearly determined it was an important measure. But we all know that there are a myriad of reasons that affect attendance, not just health, and most of these are outside the control of the school. Perhaps there is a lack of parental support; bullying; living in a home with cannabis consumption; the list goes on. We put effort into tracking ‘avoidable absences’ but not into understanding why we are tracking them in the first place. 

Ultimately such myopic concerns can distract from the broader picture: what is the purpose of the education system? Is it to ensure that every young person gets the best start in life and can maximise their potential? Or that teachers can forge a career? Or that young people entering the workforce have the skills needed to develop the economy? Is it to keep all young people between certain ages and for certain time periods within an institution and off the streets? And so on. Because what we measure is ultimately a reflection of our deeply-held beliefs and therefore what we think is important. As a society those in positions of power place these reporting burdens on those working in our civic, social and public institutions. As individuals in those institutions we prioritise our time and energy on those incentives that come with the most negative consequences for our personal reputation and career development. However much that may push us into conflict with our own moral, ethical, political and professional leanings. 

¹ https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2023/04/ofsted-inspections-cause-teachers-stress-and-arent-backed-up-by-strong-evidence–things-could-be-done-differently/