Is it us?

If your organisation lost 50% of the people it served every year, you'd ask: "Is it us?"

Yet in education, we label students who leave as “dropouts”, as if they’ve failed, when the system has really failed them.

In this clip, Sir Ken reminds us that education is fundamentally personal. Every child has a biography, motivations, and feelings. When we treat children as data points and run schools like standardised machines, we lose what makes education work: humanity, relationships, and the artistry of great teaching.

The Cost of Impersonality

We’ve built education systems modelled on factories and conformity. When we insist on driving everything by test results, we lose sight of the system’s purpose entirely.

“Dropout rates.” “Below grade level.” These terms treat leaving as a personal failing, when it’s often a rational response to a system that doesn’t see the person in front of it. Every child who stays has a reason to be there. Everyone who leaves has a reason to leave.

The melee that ensues to meet the demands of standardised testing has buried the artistry at the heart of education. We’ve traded the art of teaching for the science of measurement.

What do you remember about your education? Probably not the tests. Most might say the teachers; the ones who saw something in you, who created experiences that made you feel understood. Education works when it’s human.

The Shift We Need

Education is personal. If we want students to flourish, we need systems that see them as people, with their stories still being written.